Certainly the obituary writers seemed to think so, comparing Scofield with the likes of Olivier and Gielgud, and applauding his apparent disdain for film-making.

In a film career that spanned five decades, Scofield made only 16 movies. Unlike his '50s contemporary Richard Burton, who embraced feature films and their attendant riches – "career madly thrown away" wrote one commentator on his death in 1984 – Scofield opted for a more modest output. Unlike seven-time nominee Burton, Scofield did win an Academy Award: as Sir Thomas More in Fred Zinnemann's opulent A Man for All Seasons. That year he was up against Michael Caine, Alan Arkin, Steve McQueen and Burton. Yet it was Scofield, a relative newcomer to cinema, who was honoured.

He was a powerful figure in the few movies he deigned to make – an actor who provided a balance, a core, even an anchor for other performers.

He was the balance in Carve Her Name with Pride, a biopic of SOE agent Violette Szabo. He was the core of A Man for All Seasons. And he was the anchor in The Train, a tremendous Second World War thriller by John Frankenheimer, in which a German soldier and a French resistance fighter go head-to-head over a train loaded with art treasures. More a battle of wills than of ideology, it proved how movie star magic could be equalled (and, perhaps, even eclipsed) by the sheer power of a theatrically-trained actor.

Then there was Peter Brook's King Lear, a grim, forbidding version of Shakespeare's tale of mad monarchs; Bartleby, from Melville's novella; and Scorpio, a tale of assassins which reunited him with his Train co-star Burt Lancaster.

His later work included superb supporting turns in The Crucible and Quiz Show. Quiz Show was a capsule example of acting at its finest, summed up Scofield's brilliance and merited, I thought, some kind of tribute. Thus it was that in October 2001 I wrote to Scofield – always plain "mister", having refused a knighthood – suggesting that a retrospective of his work be presented at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford to mark his 80th birthday in January 2002.

The response I received was not the one I wanted but, in reading his letter, I couldn't find fault with his logic.

"I would have liked very much to feel that I could co-operate with you in this," he wrote, "but reluctantly I have to admit that my heart is not in it. I would prefer my birthday to pass without comment. My instinct tells me to 'play it down'."

To the man who preferred plain "Mr Scofield" to "Sir Paul", acting was a job. There was no alchemy about it. Certainly it wasn't something to be raked over, analysed and earnestly discussed at length on stage.

Everything I have read about Scofield points to a humanity and modesty that is missing in so many performers. Maybe he felt no-one would turn up. Perhaps he thought his best work had been in the theatre, and that films merely captured a fleeting moment in time.

Who knows what it was. Suffice to say that, without the blessing of the man himself, I didn't feel able to run the season.

Now he's gone. His theatre performances live on only in the memories of those who witnessed them, but his films at least give a measure of the commanding nature of an actor whose devotion to theatre meant cinema came a very definite second. Paul Scofield made too few films, and we are all the poorer for it.