The Stage

Ray Barrett

Published Tuesday 10 November 2009 at 13:00 by Michael Quinn

With coarsely chiselled features and coal-dark, furrowed eyes, Ray Barrett carved himself a sizeable niche in television and film in Britain and his native Australia, with a range that stretched from hard-bitten flesh and blood villains to selfless but string-bound puppet heroes.

By the time he shot to fame in the UK as the hard-nosed oil company agent Peter Thornton in The Troubleshooters, a role written for him by series creator John Elliott that ran for seven years from 1965, Brisbane-born Barrett had served a long apprenticeship in Australian radio after winning a talent competition when he was just 12. By the time he was 24 he had become the first actor to be put under contract by ABC, Australia’s national broadcaster.

Moving to London in 1957, his unlikely breakthrough came as a stooge to ventriloquist Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews. Appearances in TV staples of the sixties, including Armchair Theatre, Emergency - Ward 10, The Avengers, Doctor Who and Z Cars followed, before he was signed as the voices of battle-scarred veteran Commander Sam Shore and his sub-aquatic arch-nemesis King Titan in Stingray.

In Thunderbirds, he doubled-up again as hero and villain, voicing orbiting astronaut do-gooder John Tracy and International Rescue’s mysterious evil adversary The Hood. Following the career-making 106 episodes of The Troubleshooters, Barrett was an ever-present face on television, although he had to wait until his 35-episode, two-year tenure in the Australian drama Something in the Air, beginning in 2000, to find a role that gave him a sustained profile.

Having returned home in 1977, he appeared in notable Australian films including Don’s Party (having also been in the 1975 Royal Court production) and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. In recent years he made a number of distinctive television and film cameos, his last appearance coming in Baz Luhrmann’s 2008 epic, Australia.

In 2005 he won the Australian Film Institute’s highest accolade, the Ray Longford Award - one of only five actors to be recognised in its 41-year history.

Born Raymond Charles Barrett on May 2, 1927, he married three times and is survived by his third wife and three children from his first two marriages. Suffering from chronic low blood pressure, he died from a brain haemorrhage after falling in hospital in Brisbane on September 8 at the age of 82.