Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing

Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE, was an English actor best known for his roles in the Hammer Productions horror films of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. His acting career spanned over six decades and included appearances in more than 100 films, as well as many television, stage and radio roles. He earned particular acclaim for his lead performance in a BBC Television adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. He died in 1994 of prostate cancer and was survived by his wife Helen and their three children, all of whom were born in the 1960s and 70s.

About Peter Cushing in brief

Summary Peter CushingPeter Wilton Cushing, OBE, was an English actor best known for his roles in the Hammer Productions horror films of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. His acting career spanned over six decades and included appearances in more than 100 films, as well as many television, stage and radio roles. Born in Kenley, Surrey, Cushing made his stage debut in 1935 and spent three years at a repertory theatre before moving to Hollywood to pursue a film career. He earned particular acclaim for his lead performance in a BBC Television adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Cushing continued acting into his later years, and wrote two autobiographies. He was married to Helen Cushing for 28 years before she died in 1971. He died in 1994 of prostate cancer and was survived by his wife Helen and their three children, all of whom were born in the 1960s and 70s. The Cushing family lived in Dulwich during the First World War, but moved to Purley after the war ended in 1918. Although raised during wartime, he was too young to understand or become greatly affected by it, and was shielded from the horrors of war by his mother, who encouraged him to play games under the kitchen table whenever the threat of possible bombings arose. In his infancy, he twice developed pneumonia and once what was then known as double pneumonia. Although he survived, the latter was often fatal during that period, and he spent only one term at the boarding school before returning home.

He later claimed in his youth he always wanted to be an actor, and later claimed he was a fan of comics and toy collectibles. He began his early education in South Dulwich, before attending the Grammar School in Shoreham, Shoreham-by-Sea on the Sussex coast between Brighton and Worthing Prickness. With the exception of art, he had little interest in most subjects that did not interest him for which he did not pay much attention. He had a love of puppets and earned money staging puppet shows for family members with his glove-puppets and toys. He played Dr. Who in Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A. D. and gained the highest amount of visibility in his career with his part in the original Star Wars film. His mother had so hoped for a daughter that for the first few years of his life, she dressed Peter in girls’ frocks, let his hair grow in long curls and tie them in bows of pink ribbon, so others often mistook him for a girl. His father, a quantity surveyor from an upper-class family, was a reserved and uncommunicative man whom Peter said he never got to know very well. Cushing’s family consisted of several stage actors, including his paternal grandfather Henry William Cushing, his paternal aunt Maude Ashton and his step-uncle Wilton Herriot, after whom Peter Cushing received his middle name.