For almost 40 years, English character-actor Peter Woodthorpe was a familiar face in British films and television shows, beginning in horror movies in the 1960s, playing Del and Rodney's prodigal father in a Christmas special Only Fools and Horses in 1983 and the pathologist Max in the first two series of Inspector Morse in 1987-88.

Woodthorpe, who has died at home in Buckinghamshire at the age of 72, was also a familiar voice. He served as Gollum in both the original animated film in 1978 and the ambitious 13-hour BBC radio adaptation a few years later, and dubbed the character Pigsy in the English-language version of the Japanese fantasy-action show Monkey.

The sex-mad Pigsy was one of the supernatural companions who accompany a seventh-

century Buddhist priest on his adventurous journey from China to India. The show acquired a cult following on BBC2 in the late 1970s and early 1980s and subsequently on video, and Woodthorpe was recently recalled to dub 13 ''lost'' episodes, previously not translated into English.

He was also a hugely accomplished theatre actor and appeared in leading roles in the original London productions of some of the most significant new plays of the twentieth century.

Born in York in 1931, Woodthorpe made his reputation on the stage in his twenties, playing Estragon in Peter Hall's 1955 London production of Waiting for Godot, a role he reprised in a BBC adaptation

six years later. Beckett and Woodthorpe watched it in uncomfortable silence, for it served only to confirm Beckett's fear that the play was unsuitable for the screen.

Woodthorpe co-starred

with Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence in the original London production of The Care-taker in 1960, and he continued to appear on stage throughout his career.

Scottish audiences had the chance to see him in The Soldier's Fortune, with David Rintoul, at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh in 1974, and in the acclaimed Glasgow Citizens' Theatre production of Mourning Becomes Electra, with

Glenda Jackson and Georgina Hale, in 1991.

But film and television took him to a wider audience. In 1963 he appeared in Dr Finlay's Casebook and the pioneering police series Z Cars on television, and had a supporting role in the comedy film Father Came Too!.

The following year he shared star billing with Peter Cushing in The Evil of Frankenstein, the

latest instalment in the Ham-mer franchise. He was Zoltan, a hypnotist recruited by Cushing's Baron Frankenstein to help

animate his creature, but Zoltan determines to use the creation for his own agenda of robbery and vengeance.

Subsequent cinema included the horror films Hysteria (1965) and The Skull (1965), The Blue Max (1966), The Charge of

the Light Brigade (1968), The Mirror Crack'd (1980), in which

the starry cast included Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and

Tony Curtis, and Woodthrope played a scout master, The Madness of King George (1994), in which he was a clergyman, and Jane Eyre (1996).

His most memorable television roles were as the grumpy pathologist Max on Morse and as Reg Trotter, the long-absent father, who turns up to celebrate Christmas with his boys, in Thicker than Water, the 1983 Christmas Day special of Only Fools and Horses. Reg claims he has a hereditary blood disorder and wanted to warn them.

Woodthorpe went on working until recently, appearing in supporting roles in several big international television productions, including David (1997), The Odyssey (1997) and Merlin (1998). One of his last appearances was as Mr Creakle in a Hallmark television adaptation of David Copperfield (2000).

Peter Woodthorpe, actor; born September 25, 1931, died August 13, 2004.