Peter Vaughan
as Maester Aemon
Character Overview: Maester Aemon is the maester of the Night’s Watch and one of the oldest people alive in the kingdom.
Actor Bio: A true character actor in the best sense of the word, British thespian Peter Vaughan’s hefty frame could appear intimidating or marshmallow benevolent. This veteran has been a stalwart presence for nearly fifty years. He began on the stage and did not enter films until 1959, well into his thirties. Peter was primarily in the background at first, offering a cheapjack gallery of thugs, unsmiling cops, and foreign agents in movies. An easily unsympathetic bloke, he played unbilled policemen in his first two films, then slowly gravitated up the credits list. He appeared as the chief of police in the spy drama The Devil’s Agent (1962), and then gained a bit more attention in a prime part as an offbeat insurance investigator in Smokescreen (1964), a role that propelled him into the higher ranks. Noticeably shady roles came with playing Tallulah Bankhead’s seedy handyman who meets a fatal end in the Gothic horror Die! Die! My Darling! (1965); his villainous roles in the spy thrillers The Naked Runner (1967) opposite Frank Sinatra and The Man Outside (1967); a German thug in A Twist of Sand (1968); and Sgt. Walker in The Bofors Gun (1968). TV became a large source of income for Vaughan in the 1970s, particularly in his role of Grouty in Doing Time (1979) on both the large and small screen, and his quirky demeanor fitted like a glove for bizarre director Terry Gilliam, who cast him as the Ogre in Time Bandits (1981) and then as Mr. Helpman in Brazil (1985). For the past few decades he has maintained a healthy balance between film (including standout roles in Zulu Dawn (1979), The Remains of the Day (1993) and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)) and TV mini-movies, both contemporary and period. He is still performing past age 80. In 2007, he starred as Uncle Alfie in the film Death at a Funeral, alongside Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister). – IMDb
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