Obituary: Richard Pearson, actor

Richard Pearson was an actor whose face and voice were known to many television viewers. His craggy looks, tousled hair and avuncular appearance made him ideal for playing authority figures (doctors and lawyers were very much his forte).

While Pearson was acknowledged as a fine character actor he reached a wider public late in his career when he joined, in the late 1990s, George Cole in ITV's sitcom My Good Friend. The two elders - both rather lonely and distraught individuals - met up with younger neighbours and have fun fulfilling the various gaps in each others' lives. It brought from Pearson a joyous and loving performance.

Richard de Pearsall Pearson was born in Monmouth and was educated in Worcester, making his first appearance on stage at a music hall in north London in his teens.

During the war Pearson served with the 52nd Lowland Division, was mentioned in dispatches and was demobbed with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He returned to the theatre and made an early tour of Scotland in a play called Lady from Edinburgh in 1947.

Ten years later Pearson was in the original cast, playing Stanley, in Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. It is now a classic of the post-war theatre but that first production lasted just five nights in London.

The critics panned the play - although the doyen of critics, Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times, wrote: "Pearson's Stanley, excellent throughout, is very moving in (his] hurt wonder when given the child's drum as a birthday present."

The disappointment of The Birthday Party's failure did not last long and Pearson was soon seen opposite many major stars in the West End, notably Peter Shaffer's The Private Eye, The Public Eye (with Maggie Smith) and was a glorious cardinal in Edward Albee's Tiny Alice.

During the run of the Shaffer play Pearson became fast friends with another member of the cast: the comedian Kenneth Williams. The two presented Smith with a quaich after 200 performances (inscribed: "The Pearson-Williams Award to Maggie Smith"). Before the play ended its run Williams gave Pearson a wrist watch and engraved on it the dates they were in the West End. Williams adds in his diary with typical honesty: "Because he has been a true friend to me and one I want to keep."

One of his greatest stage successes came in 1971 when he appeared at the Chichester Festival, then in the West End as William Cecil, opposite Eileen Atkins's Queen Elizabeth I and Sarah Miles as Mary, Queen of Scots in Robert Bolt's Vivat! Vivat Regina! There were two other notable appearances opposite Maggie Smith in the West End. In 1987 he was in Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage and in 1993 Pearson was a charismatic Rev Chasuble in Nicholas Hytner's production of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.Maggie Smith set the National Theatre alight as an ebullient Lady Bracknell.

Pearson's quirky voice ensured he won several major - and many important cameo - roles on television. One of his most endearing parts came in ITV's hugely successful A Fine Romance in the 1980s. As Judi Dench's warm-hearted dad, Pearson created a loveable, caring father: rather in contrast to his overpowering wife played by Lally Bowers.

There was one scene between Parson and Dench when he was supporting her romance that displayed Pearson at his most tender and sympathetic.

Other television credits included a personal success in The Wind in the Willow, as the voice of Mole; One Foot in the Grave (as Victor Meldrew's absent-minded brother. but a wonderful contrast to the irascible Victor) and Men Behaving Badly (as Gary's father).

Earlier in his career Pearson had been in such popular series as Z Cars, Middlemarch, The First Churchills and Thrse Raquin.

His movie career included The Girl Is Mine, The Yellow Rolls-Royce, Charlie Bubbles (with Albert Finney), John Schlesinger's Sunday Blood Sunday and two Roman Polanski's films, Macbeth and Pirates.

In 1949 Pearson married the actress Pat Dickson, whom he had met the previous year when they both auditioned successfully for a production of This Is Where We Came In.

His wife Pat, and their two sons survive him.