Born in Ceylon to British parents he was educated in Australia. Later joined the British army then took a law degree at Oxford but turned down a law career to spend 3 years in rep making his stage debut in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.
Many have noted that his slightly husky English voice is astonishingly
similar to that of James Mason, and as the sinister Squire Hamilton in
Hammer's The Plague of the Zombies (1966), he has been often been compared to fellow Hammer
actor Christopher Lee.
He was considered for the roles of Dr. Hans Fallada, Dr. Armstrong, Dr. Bukovsky, Sir Percy Heseltine, the Pathologist and the Prime Minister in Lifeforce (1985).