Before Darth Vader became the Star Wars series’ supervilln there was Grand Moff Tarkin, played with panache by veteran screen bad guy Peter Cushing. Torty Eamshaw profiles the late, great star and recalls one of his most iconic roles...

Star Wars arrived at a period in Peter Cushing’s life when he was desperate for employment. An actor for 40 years, by 1976 he was working almost constantly, moving rapidly from one project to another in an attempt to exorcise his grief over the devastating loss of his wife, Helen, who had died five years before.

Cushing had first made his name in the embryonic days of live television, during which he played leading roles in a string of top-rated plays often imported straight from the West End.

Among them were Pride and Prejudice, The Noble Spaniard, As D ouglas Trumbull’s futuristic eco-fantasy Epitaph for a Spy, Home at Seven, Tovarich, Beau Brummell, and Anastasia. celebrates its half century, Roger Crow looks back on the heartbreaking saga, and pays tribute to a giant of fantasy cinema.

Perhaps his greatest TV triumph was in the BBC’s infamous adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four. (Just released on Blu-ray by the BFI). It made newspaper headlines across the UK and made Cushing a star – actually the first bona fide star that British television had ever had.

His success in the role of Winston Smith, and in other television plays, brought him to the attention of Hammer Film Productions, and in 1956 he was cast as Baron Victor Frankenstein in The Curse of Frankenstein, Hammer’s fast and loose – and ground-breaking colour – version of the timeless horror classic.

In the years that followed Cushing carved himself a niche in chillers, specialising in mad scientists meddling in ‘things best left alone’. By the mid-‘70s he had appeared in 60 horror films and had largely left behind ‘straight’ dramas such as Hamlet, The End of the Affair and The Naked Edge.