Geoffrey Chater

Geoffrey Chater was a much in-demand character actor whose unforced poise and lightly worn haughtiness made him a natural for figures of privilege and authority - from a British consul in Brideshead Revisited and school chaplain in Lindsay Anderson's If... to doctors, military officers and peers of the realm. Those same qualities also lent him a formidable presence on stage. His father a composer for dance bands, his mother the actor Gwendoline Gwynne, Chater was born in Barnet, north London. Aged eight, he saw his mother in Merton Hodge's comedy The Wind and the Rain at the now demolished Scala Theatre and decided to become an actor. After boarding at Marlborough College, he joined the army in 1940 while still in his teens and rose to the rank of captain, spending the war in India and Burma where he became involved in morale-boosting revues. Returning home, Chater began his professional career with Windsor rep and made his West End debut in Bruce Walker's thriller Master Crook at th