In Butterflies and As Time Goes By, Palmer embodied romantic uncertainty – but his other speciality was authoritarians who overreached themselves
His long, thin face tending to dolefulness even in repose, Geoffrey Palmer, who has died aged 93, was one of the finest screen purveyors of pain, sadness and other male emotions desperate to remain unsaid.
Having played his first small TV role in the mid-1950s, he had recently completed a part in the Canadian film An Unquiet Life, a biopic about author Roald Dahl – screen credits spanning a remarkable seven decades are testimony to an actor of rare versatility, reliability, and likability, qualities developed in his early career first in amateur dramatics and then regional repertory theatre.
