Paul Rogers - Telegraph Having had two small parts in Ronald Gow's version for the Bristol Old Vic of Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles at the Piccadilly in 1947, he stayed on with the company for two seasons before going to the Old Vic , where he remained for nearly a decade. When the Old Vic went to Broadway in 1956, he played John of Gaunt in Richard II, Mercutio, Macbeth and Pandarus. Then he led the company on its Australian tour as Lord Foppington in The Relapse and as Hamlet. On his return, he played Lear at the Old Vic; and then, at the 1958 Edinburgh Festival, came a part that proved to be among his finest - the title role in Eliot's last play, The Elder Statesman (Cambridge, 1958). Rogers played Lord Claverton, a political boss, with, as Kenneth Tynan put it, "a fine shaggy sonority and the right look of stoic dismay, as of a man staring past the fire into his thoughts." From this performance came a stream of rather less rewarding West End parts, and he moved on to the Royal Shakespeare Company which, under Peter Hall, had spread its wings from Stratford to London. Although by then one of the most qualified Shakespeareans in the country, Rogers went to the RSC to play the patriarchal master-butcher, Max, in Pinter's new play The Homecoming. In the role of a hectoring old north London widower, he discovered such a ferocious and funny array of cockney snarls and sneers that when the show went to Broadway in 1967 he won a Tony award for Best Actor in a Drama. Rogers remained with the RSC for a couple of seasons, reviving his Falstaff in Henry IV and playing Apemantus in Timon of Athens; but the Tony Award brought him a part in a Broadway play and then in Neil Simon's triple bill Plaza Suite (Lyric, 1969), in which he showed his gift for sharp-edged American comedy . He played in Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth when it moved to Broadway from London, and appeared as Boss Mangan in Heartbreak House for the National Theatre (1975). Among Rogers's other successful stage roles was "Sir," the Wolfit-like actor-manager in Ronald Harwood's The Dresser, in New York in 1981. Until forced to retire in his eighties through physical infirmity, Paul Rogers was never out of work unless he chose to be. For relaxation he enjoyed painting watercolours. He was twice married, first to Jocelyn Wynne, then to the actress Rosalind Boxall, who died in 2004. He is survived by the two sons of his first marriage and the two daughters of his second. Paul Rogers, born March 22 1917, died October 6 2013