While he has won screen acclaim, no-one who saw his ravaged "King Lear" at Stratford, while still in his early forties, will forget his superb double act with a red-nosed Antony Sher as the Fool sitting on his master's knee like a ventriloquist's doll. There were also notable appearances in "Old Times" at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and as "Volpone" and the brutal sergeant in Pinter's "Mountain Language".