Trivia: Droll, moon-faced Scottish actor Alastair Sim was for the first decade of his adult life a professor of elocution. A late bloomer, Sim made his stage debut at age 30; in 1935, he broke into British films, appearing in no fewer than five pictures during his first year. In many of his early films, Sim portrayed slow-witted, regional types, notably the buffoonish sergeant in the Inspector Hornleigh mysteries of the late '30s. He achieved movie stardom during the 1940s, frequently portraying dithering eccentrics who weren't quite as distracted or disorganized as they seemed: the undercover detective in Cottage to Let (1943), the inquisitive Inspector Cockrill in Green for Danger (1946), and the befuddled birdwatcher in Hue and Cry (1947), for instance. Among his most fondly remembered roles of the 1950s were the taciturn moralist forced to break the law in order to qualify for an inheritance in Laughter in Paradise (1952); the enigmatic "voice of conscience" in An Inspector Calls (1954); the mild-mannered professional assassin in The Green Man (1956); his "drag" appearances as the snooty headmistress in the St. Trinians farces; and, of course, the title role in Scrooge (1951), his finest hour and a half. Seemingly growing funnier with each passing year, the 72-year-old Sim all but stole the show as a doddering cleric in the outrageous The Ruling Class (1972). Throughout his four-decade film career, Sim retained his ties to the theater, directing and starring in several of the works of playwright James Bridie and, by popular request, made frequent appearances as Captain Hook in Barrie's Peter Pan; Sim made his last stage appearance in 1975, the year before his death.

Trivia: British actress Fay Compton came from a formidable acting lineage; her father was actor/manager Edward Compton, and her grandfather was 19th-century theatrical luminary Henry Compton. Starting in the Follies staged by first husband H. G. Pelissier, Fay Compton made her mark in the plays of J. M. Barrie (of Peter Pan fame). Fay in fact introduced several of Barrie's plays to London audiences, notably in the title role of Mary Rose in 1920. Active in the classics as well as contemporary material, Compton had the distinction of playing Ophelia opposite two of the most celebrated Hamlets, John Barrymore and John Gielgud. The actress' most significant successes in the 1930s were in two sophisticated comedies by Dodie Smith, Autumn Crocus and Call it a Day; in 1941, she created the role of Ruth in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. Compton's film work is not as well known or as highly regarded as her stage appearances, but she managed to squeeze in a good many screen roles between her movie debut in She Stoops to Conquer (1914) and her final appearance in Alex and the Gypsy (1970). The Fay Compton film performances most accessible to American audiences are Odd Man Out (1947), Laughter in Paradise (1951) Orson Welles' Othello (1952) and The Haunting (1963)--all made when her ingenue and young-sophisticate roles were behind her and when she was in her "Lady Bracknell" dowager period. Fay Compton was the mother of British director Anthony Pelisser, whose most significant film was The Rocking Horse Winner (1951).

Trivia: Mustachioed British character actor Guy Middleton worked in the stock exchange until his mid twenties. After his first film, A Woman Alone (1932), Middleton secured a berth for himself as a double-dyed villain thanks to his disgraced-gentleman demeanor. As his acting matured, his villainy became less overt, and by the mid '40s he was one of the best "cad and bounder" types in British films (with a few wastrel playboys thrown in). The ideal starring role for Middleton might have been The Rake's Progress (1946), but the dictates of the box office gave Rex Harrison the leading part and regelated Middleton to the supporting cast. Guy Middleton retired from films after The Magic Christian (1970), where once more he was way down the cast list while the lead was played by the foremost dissipated-aristocrat player of the '70s, Peter Sellers.

Trivia: Trained for a stage career at the Morden Council School, 14-year-old George Cole made his London stage debut in the 1939 production White Horse Inn. Cole ascended to juvenile stardom as a young evacuee in 1940's Cottage to Let, repeating the role in the 1941 film version. As an adult, Cole specialized in light, semicomic characterizations on both stage and screen. His most cherished movie roles include the mother-dominated protagonist in the "Kite" segment of Quartet (1948) and shifty salesman Flash Harry in the first two St. Trinians farces of the 1950s. He entered the household-word category as a klutzy con man in the British TV series Minder, which ran from 1979 to 1984. George Cole's other weekly TV credits include Don't Forget to Write (1977-1979), The Bounder (1982-1988), Heggerty Haggerty (1984-1985), Comrade Dad (1986), and Root Into Europe (1992). Cole continued to act into his advanced years; he died in 2015 at age 90.

Trivia: British character actress Joyce Grenfell was still using her maiden name of Phipps when she began her career as a journalist. For several years, Grenfell was a radio critic for the London Observer. In 1939, tired of merely writing about performers, she joined their ranks, developing a repertoire of comedy monologues in which she usually impersonated a feather-brained upper-class matron. In films from 1943, she was especially busy in the 1950s, offering such sharply etched cinematic characterizations as Miss Gossage in The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), the hotel proprietress in Genevieve (1953) and policewoman Ruby Gates in the "St. Trinian's" farces. Though she cut back on her film appearances after 1957--one of her better latter-day cameos was in The Old Dark House (1963), as a dotty old dear whose vacant smile remains affixed to her face even after she's stabbed to death with her own knitting needles--Grenfell kept busy touring the world with her one-woman show. She appeared on Broadway in 1955 and 1958, playing to large, enthusiastic crowds on both occasions. Appointed an officer in the Order of the British Empire in 1946, Joyce Grenfell was also elected president of England's Society of Women Writers and Journalists in 1957.

Trivia: Cambridge-educated leading man Anthony Steel had several seasons of theatrical work behind him when he first stepped before the movie cameras in 1948. His heyday was in the 1950s, a fact that can be attributed as much to his well-publicized marriage to actress Anita Ekberg as to such starring vehicles as Storm Over the Nile (the 1954 remake of The Four Feathers) and The Black Tent (1955). In the 1960s, he was often as not seen in Italian costume pictures and actioners. Anthony Steel rather surprisingly re-emerged in the 1970s as a featured player in such soft-core erotica as The Story of O, then played character parts in films like The Mirror Crack'd until his retirement in the early '80s.

Trivia: Bantam-weight Scotsman John Laurie abandoned a career in architecture when he first stepped on stage in 1921. Laurie spent most of the next five decades playing surly, snappish types: the taciturn farmer who betrays fugitive Robert Donat in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935), the repugnant Blind Pew in Disney's Treasure Island (1950) et. al. A friend and favorite of Laurence Olivier, Laurie showed up in all three of Olivier's major Shakespearean films. He played Captain Jamie in Henry V (1944), Francisco ("For this relief, much thanks") in Hamlet (1948) and Lord Lovel in Richard III (1955). Intriguingly, Olivier and Laurie portrayed the same historical character in two entirely different films. Both portrayed the Mahdi, scourge of General "Chinese" Gordon: Laurie essayed the part in The Four Feathers (1939), while Olivier played the role in Khartoum (1965). Millions of TV fans worldwide have enjoyed Laurie in the role of Fraser on the BBC sitcom Dad's Army. One of John Laurie's few starring assignments was in the 1935 film Edge of the World, set on the remote Shetland isle of Foula; 40 years later, a frail-looking Laurie was one of the participants in director Michael Powell's "reunion" documentary Return to the Edge of the World (1978).

Trivia: Round-faced, heavily eye-browed British character-player Ronald Adam was the son of actors Blake Adam and Mona Robin. Even while pursuing his own career, Adam had time to participate in two World Wars; he spent much of World War I as a POW, while in World War II he successfully campaigned for an officer's commission despite his age. Often seen playing stern officials, Adam made his first film, The Drum in 1938, and his last, Song of Norway, in 1970. In addition to his many stage and screen appearances, Ronald Adam was also a fairly productive playwright.

Trivia: A performer since the age of ten (his first major film role was in 1921's The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's), British actor Leslie Dwyer matured into an agreeable character player. His plump frame and jaunty cockney dialect were familiar ingredients to many films of the '40s and '50s. Dwyer could be seen in such internationally distributed British productions as In Which We Serve (1942), The Way Ahead (1944), Vacation from Marriage (1946), Laughter in Paradise (1951), the remake of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1959) and Die, Monster, Die (1966). When not before the cameras, Leslie Dwyer could be found at the cricket fields, either as player or enthusiastic spectator.

Trivia: A burly, exuberant British character star, Hugh Griffith worked as a bank clerk before debuting onstage in 1939; he appeared in one film in 1940, but his film career didn't begin in earnest until the late '40s. He played forceful character roles in dozens of plays and films in both the U.S. and Britain. For his portrayal of Sheik Ilderim in Ben-Hur (1959) Griffith won a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar; he was nominated for the same award for his portrayal of lusty Squire Western in Tom Jones (1963), perhaps his best known performance. Hugh Griffith was last onscreen in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978).

Trivia: British playwright and screenwriter Michael Pertwee is the son of actor/playwright/screenwriter Roland Pertwee. Michael Pertwee began his film career during the late '30s. Since then he has written and co-written for scores of British and American satirical films. His brother, Jon, is a comic actor on stage and screen.

Trivia: Magical screen presence, fashion arbiter, shrine to good taste, and tireless crusader for children's rights, Audrey Hepburn has become one of the most enduring screen icons of the twentieth century. Best-known for her film roles in Breakfast at Tiffany's, My Fair Lady, Roman Holiday and Charade, Hepburn epitomized a waif-like glamour, combining charm, effervescence, and grace. When she died of colon cancer in 1993, the actress was the subject of endless tributes which mourned the passing of one who left an indelible imprint on the world, both on and off screen.Born into relative prosperity and influence on May 4, 1929, Hepburn was the daughter of a Dutch baroness and a wealthy British banker. Although she was born in Brussels, Belgium, her early years were spent traveling between England, Belgium, and the Netherlands because of her father's job. At the age of five, Hepburn was sent to England for boarding school; a year later, her father abandoned the family, something that would have a profound effect on the actress for the rest of her life. More upheaval followed in 1939, when her mother moved her and two sons from a previous marriage to the neutral Netherlands: the following year the country was invaded by the Nazis and Hepburn and her family were forced to endure the resulting hardships. During the German occupation, Hepburn suffered from malnutrition (which would permanently affect her weight), witnessed various acts of Nazi brutality, and at one point was forced into hiding with her family. One thing that helped her through the war years was her love of dance: trained in ballet since the age of five, Hepburn continued to study, often giving classes out of her mother's home.It was her love of dance that ultimately led Hepburn to her film career. After the war, her family relocated to Amsterdam, where the actress continued to train as a ballerina and modeled for extra money. Hepburn's work led to a 1948 screen test and a subsequent small role in the 1948 Dutch film Nederlands in Zeven Lessen (Dutch in Seven Lessons). The same year, she and her mother moved to London, where Hepburn had been given a dance school scholarship. Continuing to model on the side, she decided that because of her height and lack of training, her future was not in dance. She tried out for and won a part in the chorus line of the stage show High Button Shoes and was soon working regularly on the stage. An offer from the British Pictures Corporation led to a few small roles, including one in 1951's The Lavender Hill Mob. A major supporting role in the 1952 film The Secret People led to Monte Carlo, Baby (1953), and it was during the filming of that movie that fate struck for the young actress in the form of a chance encounter with Colette. The famed novelist and screenwriter decided that Hepburn would be perfect for the title role in Gigi, and Hepburn was soon off to New York to star in the Broadway show. It was at this time that the actress won her first major screen role in William Wyler's 1953 Roman Holiday. After much rehearsal and patience from Wyler (from whom, Hepburn remarked, she "learned everything"), Hepburn garnered acclaim for her portrayal of an incognito European princess, winning an Academy Award as Best Actress and spawning what became known as the Audrey Hepburn "look." More success came the following year with Billy Wilder's Sabrina. Hepburn won a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the title role, and continued to be a fashion inspiration, thanks to the first of many collaborations with the designer Givenchy, who designed the actress' gowns for the film.Hepburn also began another collaboration that year, this time with actor/writer/producer Mel Ferrer. After starring with him in the Broadway production of Ondine (and winning a Tony in the process), Hepburn married Ferrer, and their sometimes tumultuous partnership would last for the better part of the next fifteen years. She went on to star in a series of successful films during the remainder of the decade, including War and Peace (1956), 1957's Funny Face, and The Nun's Story (1959), for which she won another Oscar nomination.Following lukewarm reception for Green Mansions (1959) and The Unforgiven (1960), Hepburn won another Oscar nomination and a certain dose of icon status for her role as enigmatic party girl Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). The role, and its accompanying air of cosmopolitan chic, would be associated with Hepburn for the rest of her life, and indeed beyond. However, the actress next took on an entirely different role with William Wyler's The Children's Hour (1961), a melodrama in which she played a girls' school manager suspected of having an "unnatural relationship" with her best friend (Shirley MacLaine).In 1963, Hepburn returned to the realm of enthusiastic celluloid heterosexuality with Charade. The film was a huge success, thanks in part to a flawlessly photogenic pairing with Cary Grant (who had previously turned down the opportunity to work with Hepburn because of their age difference). The actress then went on to make My Fair Lady in 1964, starring opposite Rex Harrison as a cockney flower girl. The film provided another success for Hepburn, winning a score of Oscars and a place in motion picture history. After another Wyler collaboration, 1965's How to Steal a Million, as well as Two for the Road (1967) and the highly acclaimed Wait Until Dark (1967)--for which she won her fifth Oscar nomination playing a blind woman--Hepburn went into semi-retirement to raise her two young sons. Her marriage to Ferrer had ended, and she had married again, this time to Italian doctor Andrea Dotti. She came out of retirement briefly in 1975 to star opposite Sean Connery in Robin and Marian, but her subsequent roles were intermittent and in films of varying quality. Aside from appearances in 1979's Bloodline and Peter Bogdanovich's 1980 They All Laughed, Hepburn stayed away from film, choosing instead to concentrate on her work with starving children. After divorcing Dotti in the early 1980s, she took up with Robert Wolders; the two spent much of their time travelling the world as part of Hepburn's goodwill work. In 1987, the actress was officially appointed UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador; the same year she made her final television appearance in Love Among Thieves, which netted poor reviews. Two years later, she had her final film appearance as an angel in Steven Spielberg's Always.Hepburn devoted the last years of her life to her UNICEF work, travelling to war-torn places like Somalia to visit starving children. In 1992, already suffering from colon cancer, she was awarded the Screen Actors' Guild Achievement Award. She died the next year, succumbing to her illness on January 20 at her home in Switzerland. The same year, she was posthumously awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Trivia: British actress Charlotte Mitchell played second leads and character roles on stage, television, and in films of the '50s, '60s, '70s, and '80s.

Trivia: Comedic character actor Colin Gordon appeared in many British films.

Trivia: Before becoming a British character actor of stage, screen (in bit parts) and television, Noel Howlett was a schoolmaster.

Trivia: Sebastian Cabot was one of the most recognizable acting talents ever to come out of England, a familiar and popular supporting player in movies and a star of American television for much of the last two decades of his life. For an actor who specialized in elegant and upper-class, educated roles, he was, ironically, a Cockney, born Charles Sebastian Thomas Cabot in London in July 1918, within the sound of the bells of St. Mary Le Bow Church. What's more, he came to an acting career fairly late -- and by sheer chance. When his father's business failed, Cabot left school at the age of 14 and began working as a garage helper, the first of many menial jobs. (Well into his fifties, his first love was cars and tinkering with them and their engines.) Cabot never had another day of formal education, and later worked as a chef -- which help precipitate his growth to 260 pounds -- and spent three years as a professional wrestler in London before World War II, an activity ended by an injury. It was while working as a driver for actor Frank Pettingell that Cabot first thought of acting as a career. Later, he bluffed his way into acting jobs by claiming that he'd performed in various roles that he'd heard discussed by his former boss and others while driving them around. He'd also picked up enough of the jargon of experienced actors and enough knowledge to bluff his way through small roles that he didn't keep for long. Along the way, however, he picked up more of what he needed, and bigger parts and longer professional relationships followed. Cabot got some extra work in films, started doing a lot of radio, and entertained the troops during World War II. When the war ended, he made his London debut in 1945, at age 27, in A Bell for Adano, and worked for the BBC as an expert in dialects. He was in John Gielgud's company when it brought Restoration comedy to the New York stage in 1947, and made his television debut on the same tour, playing a French schoolmaster in Topaz for CBS's Studio One, his first contact with the network that would make him a star more than a decade later. He first grew his familiar beard for a role in an Italian movie that was never produced, but the dignified, intense appearance that it gave him got Cabot the part of Lord Capulet in a mid-'50s film Romeo and Juliet and helped him secure the role of Porthos in the European-produced TV series The Three Musketeers, though to American filmgoers he was probably most familiar during those years for his appearances in such large-scale MGM productions as Richard Thorpe's Ivanhoe and Vincente Minnelli's Kismet, portraying the Grand Vizier in the latter. It was on American television in the '60s that Cabot established the persona that would make him a star -- but also leave him typecast. In 1960, he became the star, alongside Anthony George and Doug McClure, of a very cerebral suspense program called Checkmate (created by renowned mystery author Eric Ambler), which was about a firm of private investigators who specialize in preventing crime. As Dr. Carl Hyatt, Cabot was the program's rotund, dignified, Oxford-educated criminologist; the series ran two seasons. Around this same time, the actor also had major starring and supporting roles in such movies as The Time Machine (1960) and Twice Told Tales (1962). By then, he'd given up the stage in favor of film and TV work, enjoying a wide diversity of roles. One of his more difficult parts during this period was his guest appearance on The Twilight Zone in the 1960 installment "A Nice Place to Visit." He played Mr. Pip, a kind of tour guide from beyond the mortal veil who proves to have some unexpected angles to his character. Dressed in white and sporting his hair (including his distinguished beard) dyed white, Cabot carried the whole episode in tandem with Larry Blyden as the object of his attentions, a lately deceased criminal. Unfortunately, the dye-job sidelined the actor from other work for months until his natural color returned, though he was able to further cement his familiarity by becoming a regular on the celebrity game show Stump the Stars. In 1965, Cabot was approached with the script for the pilot of a proposed series called Family Affair. He didn't want to do it, and didn't care for the writing or his part -- a stereotypical, staid, dignified English butler -- but the money being offered for the pilot was better than decent, so he reluctantly agreed. The series sold, and for the next five seasons he endeared himself to a generation of viewers as the reserved, well-spoken Giles French (usually referred to as Mr. French), coping with the intrusion of three orphaned children on his employer's bachelor paradise. Although he did his best to bring a certain droll humor to the role, and the series did make him a star, Cabot became bored with the role and the show very early. In an interview done soon after it ended, he confided that both he and Brian Keith (the series' adult lead) were bored to the point of exhaustion for the last two seasons, though a new contract that he signed in the middle of the run also raised Cabot's pay to such a level that he was able to pick and choose his roles once the show had ended. He did talk shows and even a game show or two, but as an actor, in order to avoid being further typecast, he deliberately chose parts that were as different as possible from that of Mr. French. The best of those were his portrayal of the brutal spy master in a pair of made-for-TV movies directed by Roy Ward Baker and produced and written by Jimmy Sangster: The Spy Killer (1969) and Foreign Exchange (1970). He later became the host of the occult-thriller series Ghost Story, and from the late '60s through the mid-'70s, also did a large amount of voice-over work for Disney and other producers of animated features, including The Jungle Book in 1967 and several Winnie the Pooh films. Cabot died in August 1977 after suffering a stroke at his home in British Columbia.

Trivia: Gaunt -- nay, skeletal -- British actor Ernst Thesiger had originally studied to be an artist. While he retained his delicate manual skills for the rest of his days (he wrote several books on needlepoint), Thesiger cast his lot with Thespis when he made his first stage appearance in 1909, at the tender age of 30. He scored a personal and professional triumph as star of the stage farce A Little Bit of Fluff, which opened in 1915 and ran for several years. In 1916, he made the first of a handful of silent film appearances, and in 1924 he played the Dauphin in the original production of Shaw's St. Joan. Thesiger was well enough known in 1927 to write an autobiography, Practically True; he hadn't an inkling that his greatest acting days still lay ahead of him. In 1932, he made his talkie debut in James Whale's The Old Dark Horse, creating an indelible impression as Horace Femm, the imperious, condescending lord of the forbidding domicile of the title. Whale took full advantage of Thesiger's cadaverous features and his sneering erudition, while the actor made a meal of such simple lines as "Have a potato." Even better was the next Whale-Thesiger collaboration The Bride of Frankenstein, wherein the actor had the role of a lifetime as prissy, posturing mad scientist Dr. Praetorious. With such notable exceptions as the Whale films and the British melodramas The Ghoul (1933) and They Drive By Night (1938), most of Thesiger's screen characters were more snobbish than sinister. All of his film roles, however, can be regarded as extensions of the actor's real-life personality; from all accounts, the line between Thesiger's screen self and real self was thin indeed, as demonstrated by his disdainful public comments regarding his profession and his co-workers. Witheringly patronizing to the end, Ernest Thesiger made his final stage and screen appearances in 1960, the year before his death at age 81.