After working as a schoolteacher, he took to the stage in 1937, and in 1939 got his first film role. He served in the Second World War, and after the war resumed his acting career, mainly in character parts.
His second marriage was in 1947 to Actress Muriel Pavlow whom he met in 1941 while filming Quiet Wedding, and again on the set of The Shop at Sly Corner. They remained married until Farr's death in March 1986 aged 74.
In the early 1980s he played 16 roles in Jane Howell's television version of Shakespeare's War of the Roses cycle.
