Peter Butterworth (February 4 1919 - January 16 1979) was an English comic actor who appeared in sixteen of the Carry On films. He was married to fellow actor Janet Brown, who presented Picture Book on 1950s BBC Children's Television and later was a celebrated impersonator of Margaret Thatcher. Their son Tyler Butterworth is also an actor.

He also appeared in Doctor Who as the first Time Lord villain, the Meddling Monk, in The Time Meddler and later in the 12-part epic The Daleks' Master Plan, both with William Hartnell.

Born in Bramhall, Stockport, Cheshire, Butterworth served during World War II in the Royal Navy as a lieutenant. He was captured in the Netherlands in 1940 and attempted to escape three times. During one attempt that occurred in June, 1940 at Dugaluft near Frankfurt, Butterworth managed to escape through a tunnel and covered 27 miles (43 km) over the next three days before a member of the Hitler Youth recaptured him. Afterwards he joked about how he could never manage to work with children. The other attempts were abortive and never got beyond the camp grounds.

Ending up at Stalag Luft III, he met Talbot Rothwell, who would go on to co-write many of the Carry On films. Rothwell and Butterworth sang together in a camp show, where the booing and the catcalls were so loud that they covered up the sounds of an escape tunnel being dug by other prisoners. Butterworth also acted as one of the 'vaulters' covering for the digging escapers during the escape immortalised by the book and film The Wooden Horse - Butterworth would later audition for a part in the subsequent film but fail to get one as he 'didn't look convincingly heroic and athletic enough'. Rothwell and Butterworth continued to be close friends after the war, and the latter was inspired by the experience to take up acting.

Butterworth became a familiar face on television during the 1960s and 1970s but it was for his hapless, bumbling persona in the Carry On films that he is best remembered. His last screen role was in Alan Bennett's Afternoon Off, which was broadcast after his death in 1979.

Peter Butterworth's promising career in the British Navy ended when the plane in which he was traveling was shot down by the Germans in WW II and he was placed in a POW camp. There he became close friends with Talbot Rothwell (later a writer on the "Carry On" series, on which Butterworth often worked) and the two began writing and performing sketches for camp shows to entertain the prisoners (and to cover up the noise of other prisoners digging escape tunnels). After the war Butterworth decided to continue his acting career, and soon became a familiar character actor in both films and television. He specialized in playing gentle, well-meaning but somewhat eccentric characters (which, by most accounts, is what he was in real life). He was married to impressionist Janet Brown (I), and their son, Tyler Butterworth, also became an actor. Butterworth died suddenly in 1979, as he was waiting in the wings to go onstage in a pantomime show.