Actor played the craggy tough guy

Ray Barrett starred in <i>The Troubleshooters</i>, a 1960s TV show originally known as <i>Mogul</i>. Photo / Supplied

Ray Barrett, actor. Died aged 82.

Veteran Australian actor Ray Barrett became a star of top-rating British television in the 1960s and 1970s in programmes which were also popular in New Zealand.

His last film role was as the character Ramsden, screen father to Nicole Kidman in director Baz Luhrmann's movie Australia, released last year.

Raymond Charles Barrett was born in Brisbane. He moved to Britain in the late 1950s and starred in the long-running British television series The Troubleshooters in the 1960s.

The programme was for its first season called Mogul, an unsubtle variation of a real oil company name, before its name was changed.

Barrett was cast as tough, craggy Peter Thornton one of the chief "fix-its" in the major commercial oil corporation with worldwide interests.

The troubleshooters' activities took them (and television viewers) around the globe on to oil rigs and oil fields and were said to be realistic enough to attract a fan following from oil men themselves.

The BBC TV show had 136 episodes between 1965 and 1972.

Barrett often played tough guy roles employing the trademark acne damage on his face from childhood.

His agent Jane Cameron described him this week as a "wonderful, erudite, funny man".

In a 1983 article, Barrett named Trevor Howard and Richard Burton as cricketing and drinking buddies but said he never acted with them.

"They couldn't take a third actor with acne on the stage," he said.

He was called a skilled actor and "always a very solid presence on the screen".

But his intensity was such that at times he couldn't think of anything but the part he was playing, which he once admitted could be hard on family life.

Barrett left school at 16 and joined a local radio station as the office boy, soon rising to become a disc jockey with his own breakfast programme. It is said he was the youngest DJ in Australia.

At the same time he was appearing in three stage shows a week including Look Back in Anger with English character actress Margaret Rutherford.

In Britain, he did acting work for almost 20 years, including voices for the iconic puppet television series Thunderbirds, before he returned to Australia in the mid-1970s.

There he became a prominent player in a rejuvenated Australian film industry and received one of Australia's greatest acting accolades, an Australian Film Industry Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role in director Fred Schepisi's 1978 film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.

Ray Barrett died in hospital last Tuesday after a fall at his home in Queensland.

Barrett is survived by his third wife, Gaye, a daughter from his first marriage, Suellen, and two sons from his second marriage, Reg and John.

- AGENCY