After school, he entered the Merchant Navy and went to Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa as an apprentice before earning third mate's papers.[3] He continued his service during World War II.[3] In 1942, he left the Merchant Navy after his ship was torpedoed three times and worked in Glasgow's docklands.[3]
Late in his career, he had various roles in films, including Restless Natives (1985), Man on the Screen (1987), The Long Roads (1993), and Master of the Moor (1994).[1][4]
Urquhart also starred as Wing Commander MacPhearson in the 1970s series Pathfinders.[6][3] He played a drunken journalist in the television movie The Reporters which was shown on Play for Today in 1972.[3] His other made–for–television films included The Inheritors in 1973 and The Aweful Mr. Goodall in 1974.[3] In 1978, he played teacher George Jenkins in a television adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.[3] He acted in "Children of the Full Moon", an episode of Hammer House of Horror in 1980.[6]
He was married twice, first to the actress Zena Walker, and then to the Scottish hotelier and politician Jean Urquhart.[10] He had two sons and two daughters.[3] After the filming of The Curse of Frankenstein, Urquhart adopted the dog that was "resurrected" in the movie.[5]
He spent much of his later years in the Scottish Highlands.[3] In 1970, he turned the boat shed attached to his childhood home in Ullapool into a coffee shop called Ceilidh Place.[3][11][12] Adding the house and the house next door, they expanded the venture into a hotel, arts centre and concert hall, which he managed with his wife, Jean.[3][4][11]
In 1995 he died in a hospital in Edinburgh shortly after his second heart-bypass operation at the age of 72 years.[3][4]