Trivia: The son of British actor Roy Redgrave, Michael Redgrave attended Clifton College and Cambridge University. While teaching high school, Redgrave became involved with amateur theatricals. A professional by 1934, Redgrave made his London debut in Love's Labours Lost in 1936, and that same year appeared in his first film, Hitchcock's The Secret Agent (1936). It was thanks to his leading role in another Hitchcock effort, The Lady Vanishes (1938), that Redgrave achieved stardom. He was excellent in several starring vehicles of the 1940s, and at his very best in his 20-minute turn as a paranoid ventriloquist in Dead of Night (1946). An attempt to become a Hollywood star via Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) was scuttled due to the film's poor box office take, though Redgrave did earn an Oscar nomination for his performance. After starring in The Dam Busters, Britain's most popular 1955 movie release, Redgrave settled into film character roles, continuing all the while to headline on stage. He also wrote and directed several theatrical productions throughout his career, and was the author of four books: the instructional The Actor's Ways and Means, the novel The Mountebank's Tale, and two autobiographies. In 1959, Redgrave was knighted for his achievements in his chosen field. Long married to actress Rachel Kempson, Michael Redgrave was the father of actors Vanessa, Corin and Lynn Redgrave; and the grandfather of actresses Jemma Redgrave, Natasha and Joely Richardson.

Trivia: Silky, sultry-voiced comic actress Joan Greenwood was the daughter of renowned British artist Sydney Earnshaw Greenwood. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she made her stage debut at age 18; three years later she was cast by actor/director Leslie Howard in the lead of the wartime morale-booster The Gentle Sex (1942). Some of her best film roles were concentrated in the years 1948-1958, among them the bewitching, blackmailing mistress of anti-hero Dennis Price in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), the mercenary lady friend of inventor Alec Guinness in The Man in the White Suit (1952), and the Honorable Gwendolen Fairfax in the 1952 filmization of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. In 1954, she starred in her first Broadway production, The Confidential Clerk. Greenwood began the '60s with a surprisingly colorless damsel-in-distress role in Mysterious Island (1961) but made up for a bad start with her exquisite portrayal of Lady Bellaston in Tom Jones (1963), which earned her an Oscar nomination. In films right up to the year of her death, Joan Greenwood was the wife (and later widow) of British actor Andre Morrell.

Trivia: Michael Denison only made 21 movies in the course of a 60-year acting career, but included among them are such classics as Anthony Asquith's The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and Richard Attenborough's acclaimed Shadowlands (1993). Across those 41 years, he aged from a rakishly handsome leading man into the quintessential grand old man. His personal life wasn't as smooth, at least early on -- almost from birth, Denison's life was characterized by misfortune and tragedy, beginning with the death of his mother when he was three weeks old; he was raised by an aunt and uncle, and experienced an estrangement from his father that lasted well into his adult years. Denison attended Harrow and did some amateur acting while at school, but he never considered a career as an actor until he attended Oxford University and crossed paths with John Gielgud, who was directing plays there. His love of acting as a profession dated from a production of Richard III in which he was cast with a young Vivien Leigh. He attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and there received not only training but began one of the most enduring love stories of the English stage -- he met a fellow student, Dulcie Gray, and the two were married in 1939. They juggled their marriage and their careers for the next six decades, including 28 plays together on London's West End and countless tours of England. The pairing of Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray was so well known across the decades, that their mention even figured as one of the jokes in the "Albatross Sketch" by the Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy troupe. Their intertwined romantic and professional lives reached their public pinnacle in 1996 with their first appearance together on Broadway, in a production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. Denison was one of a very rarefied group of English actors who appeared on television before World War II, as part of the BBC's experimental broadcasts in the new medium. In 1939, he was one of the players in a television production of Eugene O'Neill's 1928 play Marco Millions, part of a cast that also included such future film actors as Robert Emhardt, Stephen Murray, and Robert Harris. He made his first big-screen appearance that same year with a small, uncredited role in the film Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday, but he didn't take movies seriously as a medium worth pursuing until after the war. Strangely enough, he was offered a screen contract in spite of that disdain for the movies; in fact, completely by accident -- as a favor to his wife while home on leave from the military in 1942, he appeared with her in one of her screen tests and was offered a contract himself, which he was unable to avail himself of because he was serving as an intelligence officer. After the war, however, Denison did start appearing in the occasional film, as his schedule between theatrical productions permitted, and as interesting roles came along. The first of his movies to receive reasonably wide distribution was the Rank Organization's production of Hungry Hill, a saga of the multi-generational conflict between two families in 19th century Ireland. His portrayal of Algernon Moncrief in Asquith's The Importance of Being Earnest is usually regarded as the best of Denison's screen performances. However, he infinitely preferred theatrical work over any other medium. Denison toured internationally well into his seventies, and only ever appeared in a handful of television shows very late in his career.

Trivia: London-born Dorothy Tutin went directly from the classrooms of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to her 1949 stage debut as Princess Margaret in The Thistle and the Rose. Tutin spent the next two seasons at the Old Vic, then scored a personal triumph in the 1953 Graham Greene play The Living Room. During her first flush of stardom, the petite, gaminelike actress was frequently compared to Broadway's Julie Harris; indeed, two of Ms. Tutin's best-known stage roles were Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera and Joan in The Lark, both of which had been introduced in America by Ms. Harris. Tutin's film work has included such parts as Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and Polly Peachum in The Beggar's Opera (1953); her co-star in the latter endeavor was Laurence Olivier, who in 1984 would play Lear opposite Tutin's Goneril in an internationally syndicated television production of King Lear. Tutin was also seen on TV as Anne Boleyn in 1971's Six Wives of Henry VIII, as Lady Fenton in the 1994 Gone With the Wind sequel Scarlet, and as star of the weekly British series Body and Soul. When not acting, Dorothy Tutin could often be found on the Continent, pursuing her hobby of mountain climbing.

Trivia: Formidable English character actress Edith Evans was celebrated for her unique voice and speech pattern. As a young woman, she held down a job while studying acting at night. In 1912 she made her professional stage debut, going on to become famous for her glorious performances of the classics both on the London stage and later on Broadway. Evans appeared in two silent films, A Welsh Singer (1915) and East Is East (1916), then went three decades before her next screen appearance, in The Queen of Spades (1949); in the meantime she devoted herself to the stage. After three films she again went seven years without a screen role, then after 1959 she began appearing in films more frequently. For her work in both Tom Jones (1963) and The Chalk Garden (1964) she received "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar nominations; for The Whisperers (1967) she won the New York Critics Award for "Best Actress," and was nominated for a "Best Actress" Oscar. Evans was an inspiration to generations of younger British stars, many of whom considered her to be their greatest influence in their professional lives. In 1946 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Her authorized biography is Dame Edith Evans: Ned's Girl (1978) by writer-director Bryan Forbes.

Trivia: Rutherford was a bulky, eccentric comedic supporting player of British films and plays. Following a number of years spent as a speech and piano teacher, she trained at the Old Vic and debuted onstage in 1925, when she was in her 30s; it was 1933 before she appeared in London. Rutherford began appearing in films in 1936 and went on to have a sporadically busy screen career through the late '60s, meanwhile continuing her illustrious stage career. She is best remembered as Miss Marple, the little old lady detective of Agatha Christie novels, in four films made in the '60s. For her work in The V.I.P.s (1963) she won a "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar. In 1967 Rutherford became a Dame of the British Empire. She was married to actor Stringer Davis, with whom she appeared in several films; one of their children was writer Gordon Langley Hall, who underwent a sex-change operation in 1968 and later wrote a biography of Rutherford under the name "Dawn Langley Hall." She wrote an autobiography, Margaret Rutherford (1972).

Trivia: Jowly, sharp-nosed British theatrical personality Miles Malleson dabbled in virtually every aspect of the dramatic arts from his 1911 stage debut onward. As a writer (he penned his first play in 1913) he was responsible for the screenplays of such treasured films as Nell Gwyn (1934), Victoria the Great (1937) and Mister Emmanuel (1944). As a producer/director, Malleson staged several notable West End plays, among them the original production of Emlyn Williams' Night Must Fall. And as an actor, Malleson contributed a bottomless reserve of screen characterizations: the childish caliph in Thief of Baghdad (1940) (which he also scripted); the spectral coachman ("Room for one more, sir') in Dead of Night (1946); the cheery hangman in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949); Reverend Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952); and a vast array of family retainers, doddering civil servants, faffling aristocrats, stern judges and rural rustics. Miles Malleson worked into his late 70s, until failing eyesight overtook him.

Trivia: For almost 40 years, from the end of the 1930s to the mid-'70s, Richard Wattis enjoyed a reputation as one of England's more reliable character actors, and -- in British films, at least -- developed something akin to star power in non-starring roles. Born in 1912, as a young man he managed to avoid potential futures in both electric contracting and chartered accountancy, instead becoming an acting student in his twenties. His stage career began in the second half of the 1930s, and in between acting and sometimes producing in repertory companies, Wattis became part of that rarified group of British actors who appeared on the BBC's pre-World War II television broadcasts. He made his big-screen debut with a role in the 1939 feature A Yank at Oxford, but spent the most of the six years that followed serving in uniform. It was after World War II that Wattis came to the attention of critics, directors, and producers for his comic timing and projection, and began getting cast in the kinds of screen and stage roles for which he would ultimately become famous, as pompous, dry, deadpan authority figures, snooping civil servants, and other comical pests. Beginning with Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), his roles and billing got bigger, and he was cast to perfection as Manton Bassett in the "St. Trinian's" films of Launder and Gilliat. Wattis became so well liked by audiences in those kinds of parts -- as annoying government officials, in particular -- that producers would see to it, if his part was big enough, that he was mentioned on posters and lobby cards. He remained very busy in films right up until the time of his death in the mid-'70s.

Trivia: Character actor Aubrey Mather launched his stage career in 1905, touring the British provinces until his 1909 London debut in Brewster's Millions. Ten years later, Mather made his first Broadway appearance in Luck of the Navy. In British films from 1931, he essayed such supporting roles as Corin in As You Like It. Moving to Hollywood in 1940, he worked with regularity at 20th Century-Fox, playing roles like Colonel Dent in Jane Eyre (1943), the Scotland Yard chief inspector in The Lodger (1944), and, best of all, mild-mannered Nazi spy Mr. Fortune in Careful Soft Shoulders (1942). Other assignments included Professor Peagram, one of the "seven dwarfs" in Goldwyn's Ball of Fire (1941), and James Forsyte in That Forsyte Woman (1949). Like his fellow Britons Arthur Treacher and Charles Coleman, Aubrey Mather is fondly remembered for his butler roles, notably Merriman in the British The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

Trivia: Walter Hudd was one of the busier actors of his generation, across a 40-year career that carried him from touring the British provinces to work in international films. Born in London at the end of the 19th century, he began his professional performing career in the teens, making his debut in the play The Manxman in 1919. He toured as a member of the Fred Terry Company, and made his London debut in the 1920s. Hudd first came to serious critical attention with his portrayal of Guildenstern in a 1925 modern-dress production of Hamlet, and he later became a theatrical star in the play Too Good To Be True, in the role of Private Meek, a character modeled after T.E. Lawrence; as surviving photos from the production reveal, in costume he was a near dead-ringer for the real-life Lawrence. Hudd also directed on the stage during the 1930s and 1940s, including several Shakespearean plays presented at Stratford-on-Avon. In movies, Hudd was usually cast in supporting and character roles, initially as part of the stable of actors associated with Alexander Korda's London Films, in movies like I Stand Condemned and Rembrandt. In 1937, however, he got a rare chance to play a lead onscreen, as Petersen in Elephant Boy, an unusual documentary-drama co-directed by Robert Flaherty and Zoltan Korda, which is best remembered today for having introduced the boy actor Sabu to the world. Hudd devoted a great deal of effort to bringing theatrical entertainment to the factory workers and more remote villages of England during World War II, though he still managed to play roles in Major Barbara and I Know Where I'm Going, among a handful of major movies. After the war, his film parts multiplied, and he was very busy on the screen during the 1950s, in productions as different as Anthony Asquith's The Importance of Being Earnest and Tony Richardson's Look Back in Anger, and playing every kind of character role from coroners (in Cast a Dark Shadow) to British admirals (in Sink the Bismarck!) and German intelligence chiefs (in The Two-Headed Spy). Had he lived longer, Hudd would almost certainly have become a fixture of British television -- he had done one very, very early episode of The Avengers -- but his death in early 1963, at age 65, cut short a promising Indian summer to his career.

Trivia: Ivor Barnard was a busy actor for 40 years on stage and screen, with dozens of plays and more than 60 movies to his credit. In England, he was respected enough, and got leading roles right into his sixties, including the part of Mr. Murdoch in the 1948 London production of Brigadoon. If there was a sad element to his career, it was that he had to wait until the final year of his life -- at the age of 66, in the role of would-be assassin Major Ross in John Huston's Beat the Devil -- to finally get noticed by American film critics, who thought him delightful. Barnard was almost too good at what he did, melting into the character roles that were his forte onscreen. Apart from a bit part in a 1920 silent, he confined his work on the stage until the dawn of the sound era. He was very active with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company in the teens, and was established in London by the early '20s. Barnard's movie career began with a small part in Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of John Galsworthy's play The Skin Game. Two years later, he got one of the more prominent movie roles of his career when he played Dr. Falke, the character who sets the story in motion when he is the victim of a practical joke, in William Thiele's screen adaptation of Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. Most of the parts that Barnard portrayed, however, were much smaller, with as little as a single line of dialogue, though he often made them memorable, such as his performance as the sarcastic bystander in the opening scene of Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard's Pygmalion (1938). Asquith thought enough of Barnard to use him in The Importance of Being Earnest 14 years later. Barnard also played small but memorable parts in David Lean's Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. It fell to John Huston to give him the most prominent screen time of his career, however, as the diminutive Ross in Beat the Devil, in which Barnard managed to hold his own in a cast that included Humphrey Bogart, Robert Morley, and Peter Lorre.