The Magnificent One: Robert Vaughn, 1932-2016

Another genre legend has passed away, so join us as we pay tribute to the original Man from U.N.C.L.E....

- Paul Mount

“With a modest amount of looks and talent and more than a modicum of serendipity, I’ve managed to stretch my fifteen minutes of fame into more than a half-century of good fortune,” wrote Robert Vaughn in his hugely entertaining 2009 autobiography A Fortunate Life. Perhaps the key word here is ‘modest’; despite an extraordinarily varied career that saw him starring in dozens of iconic feature films and television series, Robert Vaughn, who passed away last month at the age of 83 after losing his battle with leukaemia, remained down-to-earth and self-effacing. He was equally at home amidst the glitz and glamour of Hollywood during its 1950/60s heyday as on the cobbles of Weather field in a three-week stint as an ageing lothario in enduring British soap opera Coronation Street in 2012, one of his last notable screen roles. Robert Vaughn was a man who was born to act, whose fascination with Shakespeare’s Hamlet remained with him throughout his life and who was at enough peace with his life and his achievements to remark in his autobiography, “If you do the thing you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life. I did, and I haven’t.”