Vaughan said that while reciting a poem at infant school in Wellington he first experienced the applause and admiration coming from a good performance.

[4] During service in the British Army during the Second World War, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Signals on 9 June 1943,[8] and served in Normandy, Belgium, and the Far East.

[10] He played Mr. Freeman in Karel Reisz's 1980 The French Lieutenant's Woman, alongside Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons.

[12] He was also cast in Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but had not shot any material before that project was abandoned.

Vaughan appeared as a menacing character in Straw Dogs (1971), and with Bill Murray in a film of W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge in 1984.

His role in Porridge brought him a great deal of public recognition despite his character appearing in only three episodes and in the 1979 film of the series.

[13] In 1975, he appeared as Tony Kirby in an episode of the hard hitting police drama The Sweeney entitled Stay Lucky, Eh?

Other Fox family members were played by Elizabeth Spriggs, Ray Winstone, Larry Lamb, and Bernard Hill.

Historical roles Vaughan played include those of Russian foreign minister Alexander Izvolsky in the serial Fall of Eagles (1974), British politician Thomas Inskip in the mini-series Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981), the title role in A Last Visitor for Mr. Hugh Peter (1981), and German Nazi figures Kurt Zeitzler in the miniseries War and Remembrance (1988) and Hermann Göring in the Granada Television-PBS docu-drama Countdown to War (1989).

In 1991, he played John Turner in an episode of Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes titled '"The Boscombe Valley Mystery".

[20] Vaughan's first breakthrough role was in 1964 as Ed in Joe Orton's work Entertaining Mr Sloane performed at Wyndham's Theatre.