Jon Snow is in mourning.
So is much of the real world at the news that esteemed British actor Peter Vaughan, who portrayed Maester Aemon in the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones,” has died at the age of 93. The news was confirmed Tuesday by his longtime agent, Sally Long-Innes, who said Vaughan died around 10:30 a.m. “peacefully with his family around him.”
A veteran character actor whose career began in the 1950s, the self-described non-romantic lead type was primarily known for playing authority figures like police officers and shrewd secret agents. He was more than happy not to be a leading man, telling an interviewer once that “If you’re a character actor, you don’t need to wait for the next leading role. But if you are a leading man you have to wait for the next part. Sometimes that means long periods without work.”
That was never really a problem for Vaughan, whom directors Sam Peckinpah and Terry Gilliam sought out for roles in the films “Straw Dogs” and “Brazil” respectively. He received great acclaim for playing the aged butler father to Oscar winning actor Anthony Hopkins’s character in “The Remains of the Day.”
Still it was “Game of Thrones” that brought him late life fame on an epic scale around the world. In 2011, at the age of 86, the native of the tiny town of Wem was cast as Maester Aemon of the Night’s Watch. An important mentor to Jon Snow, the character was blind, which Vaughan said mirrored his own failing sight.
But he never stopped looking ahead — or appreciating everything that had come to him in his long, storied career.
“They talk about actors resting,” he told the BBC in one of his last interviews in November. “The only time I have ever rested in my 77 years as an actor has been when I’ve wanted to. Lucky, lucky, lucky.”
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