Edward Hardwicke

Actor best known as a valiant Dr Watson in Granada's Sherlock Holmes series

Edward Hardwicke, right, as Watson with Jeremy Brett as Holmes in a 1992 episode of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes.
For eight years from 1986, Edward Hardwicke, who has died aged 78, was the face of Dr Watson on television, proving a valiant and reliable foil to the dashing, neurasthenic Holmes of Jeremy Brett in the Granada series The Return of Sherlock Holmes, followed by the Casebook and the Memoirs, as well as stand-alone versions of The Sign of Four (1987) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1988). The role was a perfect fit for an actor who had played important supporting roles for a similar length of time in Laurence Olivier's National theatre company at the Old Vic, but it also demonstrated his lightness of touch as well as his sturdiness. His Watson was not an amiable old pudding-faced duffer in the style of Nigel Bruce in the series of films and radio series opposite Basil Rathbone in the 1940s; instead, he was much more the intelligent, likeable army doctor whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had first created. He painted this portrait in broader brush strokes when he and Brett appeared in a stage spin-off in 1988, The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, at Wyndham's theatre in the West End; this Watson, said one critic, was so stalwartly genuine that not even Holmes's hawk-like gaze could spot a hint of falsity in it. Hardwicke brought a similar resoluteness to the role of Conan Doyle himself when he played him in Nick Willing's strange movie Photographing Fairies (1997), telling Toby Stephens's professional debunker of photographic forgeries about his own supernatural experiences. His authenticity as an actor was innate, since he was the only child of theatrical royalty, the actors Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Helena Pickard. (The couple divorced when Edward was 16.) Cedric, whose range and fame were much wider and deeper than Edward's, was once told by George Bernard Shaw that he was the playwright's fifth favourite actor – the first four being the Marx Brothers. Edward, who would grow to be almost a physical replica of his father – sturdily built, balding, of average height – made his debut aged seven at the Malvern festival. He went to Hollywood with his parents aged 10 and appeared in Victor Fleming's film A Guy Named Joe (1943) alongside Spencer Tracy. He was educated at Stowe school, Buckinghamshire, trained at Rada in London, and did his national service as a pilot officer in the RAF with Ronnie Corbett, who became a lifelong friend. Other important friendships were formed early on with Albert Finney, Anthony Hopkins and Peter O'Toole. Hardwicke shared a flat with O'Toole during his first major employment, at the Bristol Old Vic between 1954 and 1957. After seasons in Oxford and Nottingham, and a couple of West End appearances, he joined Olivier's National in 1964, appearing in Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Congreve's Love for Love (beautifully directed by Olivier), Othello with Olivier and Frank Finlay, Ibsen's The Master Builder and as Praed in Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession with Coral Browne. These were golden years at the Old Vic, Olivier's recruits including Brett, Michael Gambon, Edward Petherbridge, Derek Jacobi and Christopher Timothy, as well as the more established Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely and Finney. Hardwicke pressed his claims particularly as Camille Chandebise in the 1966 all-star Feydeau farce A Flea in Her Ear, in which Camille's speech impairment is exacerbated whenever the weather changes. Hardwicke returned to the Bristol Old Vic to play Astrov alongside O'Toole in Uncle Vanya in 1973, and to the West End in 1975, to the Haymarket theatre, in Frederick Lonsdale's stylish comedy On Approval, with former NT colleagues Geraldine McEwan and Edward Woodward. The producer of On Approval, Duncan Weldon, said that Hardwicke was unassuming, rather shy, and a pleasure to work with: "He wasn't really like an actor at all! And of course, in those days, an actor still gave you nine months instead of the nine weeks you might be lucky enough to get today." Television work became steadier after Hardwicke appeared in the 1970s prison-camp drama Colditz, playing a character based on the war hero Pat Reid, and he ticked off appearances in many major series down the years, including Lovejoy, Peak Practice, the Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Holby City and Shameless. He even appeared in a 1974 sitcom, My Old Man, playing the son-in-law of Clive Dunn's frisky old rascal Sam Cobbett. After Watson, a somewhat sporadic movie career picked up again when Hardwicke played Anthony Hopkins's watchful brother in Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands (1993); Lord Stanley in Richard Loncraine's Richard III (1995), starring Ian McKellen and a host of great names, including Maggie Smith and Nigel Hawthorne; and the Earl of Arundel in Shekhar Kapur's beautiful Elizabeth (1998). More recently he joined another great cast in Loncraine's television film, scripted by Hugh Whitemore, The Gathering Storm (2002), and popped up, too, in Richard Curtis's Love, Actually (2003), and as kindly old Mr Brownlow in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005). His last stage appearance was in Christopher Morahan's enthralling Chichester festival theatre revival of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy in 2001; he played the arthritic Arthur Winslow, the role played by his father in Anthony Asquith's superb 1948 film. Hardwicke's godfather was Ralph Richardson, a connection that led to him founding, five years ago, with his cousin Michael Woods, the Ralph and Meriel Richardson Foundation for indigent actors. In recent years, having given up a smallholding in Normandy, he lived in Chichester, West Sussex, where he enjoyed walking his dogs and spending Sunday lunchtimes with friends. He is survived by his second wife, Prim Cotton, whom he married in 1995; and by two daughters from his first marriage, to the actor Anne Iddon, which ended in divorce. • Edward Cedric Hardwicke, actor, born 7 August 1932; died 16 May 2011