first appearances in 1978 were as a police Sergeant of Scotland Yard in The Odd Job and then in BAFTA award winning drama Licking Hitler. He then played King James in the UK television serial Will Shakespeare the same year. Paterson would later recall that the biggest regret of his career was during this period, when in 1978 he failed to attend an audition for a role in the film Alien. He provided the voice of the Assistant Arcturan Pilot in Episode 7 of the original BBC Radio 4 version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 1978. He played Lopakhin in the BBC production of The Cherry Orchard in 1981. Paterson did not, however, entirely neglect the theatre, and in 1982, he was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for his performance as Schweyk in another Brecht play, Schweik in the Second World War at the National Theatre. He was in the original National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls (1982). The early 1980s also saw Paterson beginning to appear in films, including The Killing Fields, Comfort and Joy and A Private Function (all 1984). Other film credits include Dutch Girls (1985) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1987). In television, his extensive and award-winning TV career includes a memorable portrayal of property villain Ally Fraser in series 2 of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (1986). He also appeared in Smiley's People (1982), The Singing Detective (1986), Traffik (1988). 1990–2009: Career actor Paterson performed in Death and the Maiden at the Royal Court and Duke of York's (1991–92). Other theatre roles in this period include Ivanov at the Almeida, London and Maly Theatre, Moscow (1997). In 1990, he performed the role of Mr Jenkins, father to a child who his attached in The Witches (1990). He went on to act in Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990), Chaplin (1992), Sir Ian McKellen's Richard III (1995). In 1997, he appeared as Brian, a cafe owner who knows the Spice Girls, in Spice World. He also performed in The Crow Road (1996), a miniseries from the novel by Iain Banks and Doctor Zhivago (2002). He later performed in the films Bright Young Things (2003), Miss Potter (2006), How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) and Creation (2009). In television, much of his later work has been for the BBC, starring as Dr Douglas Monaghan in three seasons of the supernatural drama series Sea