Gaunt, incisive character actor who, after several years of stage work in his native England, made his screen debut in the US with a supporting part in James Whale's excellent adaptation of "The Man in the Iron Mask" (1939). Cushing played in several other American films before returning home during WWII and eventually became a member of Laurence Olivier's acting company at the Old Vic Theater. His return to film acting came with a fine turn as the somewhat foppish courtier Osric in Olivier's telling of "Hamlet" (1948). He continued acting in cinema regularly on both sides of the Atlantic beginning with John Huston's fine biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec, "Moulin Rouge" (1952) and continued with "The Black Knight" (1954) and Joseph Losey's gripping "Time Without Pity" (1957). Cushing also distinguished himself in the early days of British TV in prestigious adaptations of "1984", "Pride and Prejudice" and "Beau Brummell".
Cushing's big break came when the modestly sized Hammer Studios, noting the popularity of old horror movies on TV in the 1950s, decided to revive the genre with a series of rather gorier and more overtly sexy remakes of earlier classics. For "The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957) they needed someone for Dr. Frankenstein who would be very much at home in period English garb and who could convey nervous tension and intelligence combined with a genuine if slightly skewed integrity. Cushing, with his thin lips, piercing stare and unusually high cheekbones, proved ideal for the part, and it transformed his career. Starring opposite Christopher Lee (who had played tiny parts in "Hamlet" and "Moulin Rouge") as the monster, Cushing became, along with Lee and Vincent Price, one of the reigning kings of screen terror.
Having tackled the Frankenstein myth, Hammer, Cushing and Lee next set their sights on Dracula. The darker, younger Lee cut a dashing figure as the vampire count, while Cushing, as Dr. Van Helsing, subtly altered the slightly fussy manner he often used in gentler fare, firming it up a bit to suggest the genteel but strong, stiff-upper-lip quality associated with the ideal English gentleman. Over the next two decades, Cushing would play both Frankenstein and Van Helsing several times, and in more than 30 horror films would generally alternate between crafty, sometimes insane but always well-spoken villains and sturdily heroic doctors and investigators forced to confront monsters.
Cushing made, not surprisingly, an excellent Sherlock Holmes opposite Lee's villainous Baskerville in a solid remake of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1959) and the dynamic duo would team up almost 20 times in films good ("Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" 1964, "I Monster" 1971, "The Creeping Flesh" 1972), bad ("The Satanic Rites of Dracula" 1978, "The House of the Long Shadows" 1982) and middling ("The Skull" 1965, "Scream and Scream Again" 1970). Through the mid-60s Cushing played good roles in non-horror films (witness his fine work as a bank clerk turned robber in the admirable suspenser "Cash on Demand" 1963) but by the end of the decade was typed almost exclusively in fright fare. To his great credit, Cushing always added class and did not become overly condescending to his material; considering that one particular actor-director had been so instrumental to his career, Cushing must have been highly honored when film critic Vincent Canby in 1970 dubbed him "Hammer's Laurence Olivier". In later films including "Star Wars" (1977)--featuring that memorably icy shot of Cushing just before the Death Star explodes--and "Biggles" (1986), Cushing made appearances which traded in heavily, and enjoyably, on his established persona, one which guaranteed solidly crafted and juicy thrills for more than a generation.