Peter Needham was associated for many years with the National Theatre and especially with historic productions by Sir Peter Hall. Needham had a wonderful ability to adapt to the style of a production and to focus his performance around the wishes of the director and the leading actors. This was demonstrated at the NT over many years and then with the Cheek by Jowl company, which he joined for several productions in the 1990s.

Charles Peter Needham attended Becket Grammar School in Nottingham and later, while working in the council offices, he spent most evenings with an amateur dramatic society. In 1952 he decided to concentrate on the theatre and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1955 he joined the Old Vic Company and toured with it to Canada where he stayed for three years, joining a touring company. In 1962 he returned to Britain and found work in several repertory companies.

It was in 1970 that Needham joined the NT and became a stalwart of the company for 15 years. He was in acclaimed productions — The Tempest and The Misanthrope in particular — at the Old Vic before the company moved to the South Bank. He was in both opening productions — Hamlet and Tamburlaine — which Hall directed, with Albert Finney playing the lead in both. In fact, the Hamlet opened at the Old Vic in 1975 and then transferred to the Olivier (with Needham as Reynaldo). He had two roles in Tamburlaine at the Olivier in 1976.

In his diaries for 1976 Hall displays some concern for the Tamburlaine — he wrote after one rehearsal it was “dull and dead”. The company, led by Finney and Denis Quilley, did an hour of the play on an outside terrace and it suddenly came alive. Hall wrote:

“Peter Needham up on the concrete battlements as the Governor of Damascus suddenly became full of power, full of emotion.”

Other productions for the NT included the controversial The Romans in Britain, Julius Caesar (John Schlesinger’s production with Sir John Gielgud), Brand (with Patience Collier), The Duchess of Malfi (with Sir Ian McKellen) and, most recently, Katie Mitchell’s production of The Three Sisters. Needham toured with Not The National Theatre and directed its double bill of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter and John Mortimer’s The Dock Brief in 1984.

From 1991-94 he was with Cheek by Jowl and was particularly distinguished as Touchstone in Declan Donellan’s all-male As You Like It. When the play toured America one critic commented: “Needham’s Touchstone is a weary, leadenly tap-dancing entertainer rejuvenated by rustic life.”

Work in television ranged from Churchill’s People, Special Branch and Bouquet of Barbed Wire to Up Pompeii and The Kenny Everett Show. He appeared in the movie Before the Rain in 2001, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Needham is survived by his wife, Jane, and three children from his first marriage and two from his second.

Peter Needham, actor, was born on August 20, 1932. He died on August 7, 2009, aged 76