A YORK-BORN actor who played the role of Gollum in two versions of The Lord Of The Rings has died.

Peter Woodthorpe, who lived in Oxfordshire, died on August 12, aged 72, after a short illness.

Long before Andy Serkis won plaudits for his portrayal of Tolkein's slippery character, Gollum, in Peter Jackson's recent Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Mr Woodthorpe lent his distinctive voice to the part both in the 1978 cartoon film version and in the 1981 BBC Radio production, in which Ian Holm starred as Frodo.

Woodthorpe's acting career spanned TV, film and the stage, as well as radio.

Born in York on September 25, 1931, he was educated at Archbishop Holgate School.

He studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he appeared with the Footlights and the Marlowe Society.

His professional career began with the now famous first British production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot.

Woodthorpe took the role of the tramp Estragon in the 1955 production at the London Arts Theatre, which was directed by Sir Peter Hall.

Now an acknowledged modern theatre classic, Sir Peter himself admitted at the time that he had no idea what some of the play meant.

Many critics savaged the production, and its first performance was greeted with a mass audience exodus. But the play was later successful and transferred to the West End.

Woodthorpe went on to play Aston, in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, for which he won the Clarence Derwent Award for the season's best male supporting performance.

In 1964, he starred alongside Peter Cushing in The Evil Of Frankenstein, playing Professor Zoltan the hypnotist.

Other roles included appearances in TV's Inspector Morse and as Reg Trotter in an episode of Only Fools And Horses.

In his later years, Mr Woodthorpe used his vocal talents once again to dub the voice of Pigsy in the cult Japanese TV show Monkey. He had recently completed work on 13 unseen Monkey episodes.

Returning to York in 1958 to visit his parents, who lived in Huntington Road, he was interviewed by a reporter from the Evening Press's sister paper, the Gazette & Herald.

Despite his already flourishing career, he told the reporter that he would "always return to York", saying it was "the most beautiful place".

Updated: 11:06 Thursday, August 26, 2004