Actors - Peter Sallis

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	Actors - Peter Sallis

Peter Sallis (b. February 1, 1921, Twickenham, Middlesex, England), is a British actor who is now best known for providing the voice for Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit films. Before these films he was already well-known for his role of the level-headed widower Norman Clegg in the BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine. He has played the role since 1973. However his long career has included many other stage, film and TV appearances. His entry alone credits him with 102 films and TV programmes.

Sallis started as an amateur actor in the RAF during World War II. He failed to get into the aircrew because of a medical problem and so taught radio procedures at RAF Cranwell. During his four years with the RAF, one of his students offered him the lead in an amateur production. His success in the role caused him to resolve to become an actor after the war, and so he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, making his first professional appearance on the London stage in 1946. Numerous appearances in London’s West End then followed.

His first notable television role was as Samuel Pepys in the BBC serial of the same name in 1958. He appeared in the Doctor Who story The Ice Warriors in 1968, playing renegade scientist Elric Penley; and in 1983 was due to play the role of Striker in another Doctor Who story, Enlightenment before having to withdraw. In 1970 he was cast in the BBC comedy The Culture Vultures, which saw him play stuffy Professor George Hobbs to Leslie Phillips' laid-back rogue Dr Michael Cunningham. During the production, Phillips was rushed to hospital with an internal haemorrhage and as a result, only five episodes were ever made.

Sallis was cast in a one-off pilot for Comedy Playhouse entitled The Last of the Summer Wine as the unobtrusive lover of a quiet life, Norman Clegg. Sallis had already worked with Michael Bates, who played unofficial ring-leader Blamire in the first two series, on stage. The pilot proved popular and the BBC commissioned it to be made into a series. As of 2005 Sallis is still playing the role of Clegg, and is one of only three cast members remaining from the original Comedy Playhouse pilot (Kathy Staff, who plays Nora Batty, and Jane Freeman who plays Ivy, the cafe owner, are still also in the series). In 1988 appeared as Clegg's father in First of the Summer Wine, a prequel to Last of the Summer Wine set in 1939.

Between 1976 and 1978 he appeared in the children's series The Ghosts of Motley Hall, in which he played Mr Gudgin, an estate agent who did not want to see the eponymous hall fall into the wrong hands.

In 1978 he starred alongside fellow northern comic actor David Roper for the ITV sitcom Leave it to Charlie as Charlie's (Roper) pessimistic boss. The programme lasted for four series, ending in 1980.

Between 1984 and 1988, he voiced Rat in the British television series The Wind in the Willows, based on the book by Kenneth Grahame. Alongside him were Michael Hordern as Badger, David Jason as Toad and Richard Pearson (actor) as Mole. The series was animated in stop motion, prefiguring his work with Aardman Animations.

Sallis achieved great success when, in 1989 he voiced Wallace, the eccentric inventor in Aardman Animations' Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out
. The made-for-television film won a BAFTA award and was followed by the Oscar-winning films The Wrong Trousers
in 1993 and A Close Shave
in 1995. Though the characters were temporarily retired in 1996, Sallis has returned to voice Wallace in several short films and in the Oscar-winning 2005 motion picture Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
.

Sallis suffers from Macular degeneration and in 2005 recorded an appeal on BBC Radio 4 on behalf of the Macular Degeneration Society.

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