Trivia: A cultured actress renowned for her elegance and dignity, Deborah Kerr was one of the leading ladies of Hollywood's Golden Age. Born Deborah Kerr-Trimmer in Helensburgh, Scotland, on September 30, 1921, she was first trained as a dancer at her aunt's drama school in Bristol, England. After winning a scholarship to the Sadlers Wells Ballet School, Kerr made her London stage debut at age 17 in Prometheus. Meanwhile, she developed an interest in acting and began getting bit parts and walk-ons in Shakespeare productions. While continuing to appear in various London stage plays, Kerr debuted onscreen in 1940 and went on to roles in a number of British films over the next seven years, often playing cool, reserved, well-bred young ladies. Her portrayal of a nun in Black Narcissus (1947) earned a New York Film Critics Best Actress award and led to an invitation from Hollywood to co-star opposite Clark Gable in The Hucksters. She remained in Hollywood, playing long-suffering, prim, proper, ladylike types until 1953, when she broke her typecast mold by portraying a passionate adulteress in From Here to Eternity, a part for which she had fought. Kerr's range of roles broadened further after that, and she began to appear in British films again. In 1953, Kerr debuted on Broadway to great acclaim in Tea and Sympathy, later reprising her role in the play's 1956 screen version. That same year, she starred as an English governess sent to tutor the children of the King of Siam in one of the most popular films of her career, The King and I. Kerr retired from the screen in 1969, having received six Best Actress Oscar nominations without an award, although she did receive an honorary Oscar in 1994. She had been honored with a special BAFTA award three years earlier in Britain, and, in 1998, she was further honored in her native land with a Companion of the Order of the British Empire. Kerr, who graced the screen one last time in the The Assam Garden (1985), died of complications related to Parkinson's Disease in October 2007. She was 86.

Trivia: The son of an Indian mahout, or elephant driver, Sabu spent much of his adolescence as a stable boy for the Maharajah of Mysore. At age 11, Sabu was discovered by documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, who cast the youth in the title role of the 1937 feature Elephant Boy. The personable Indian lad scored a hit with audiences, and was subsequently cast in such Alexander Korda productions as The Drum (1938), The Thief of Baghdad (1940), and The Jungle Book (1941). Sabu then went to Hollywood, where he fit right into the exotic derring-do of those legendary Jon Hall/Maria Montez vehicles Arabian Nights (1942), White Savage (1943), and Cobra Woman (1944). He interrupted his Hollywood career to serve in the Army Air Force as a tail gunner. Sabu's film career began losing momentum in the postwar era, though he continued to offer creditable adult performances in films like Black Narcissus (1947) and The End of the River (1947). He made films in both America and Europe during the 1950s, unsuccessfully attempting several times to launch a TV series of his own. Sabu died of a heart attack at age 39, shortly after completing his last film, Disney's A Tiger Walks.

Trivia: Formerly a journalist, David Farrar took to the stage in 1932, then to the movies in 1937. Handsome and authoritative, Farrar flourished as a dashing romantic lead in the 1940s. He moved effortlessly from the "B"-picture intrigues of Sherlock Holmes-clone Sexton Blake to the more prestigious environs of Black Narcissus (1946) and The Wild Heart (1950). In Hollywood from 1951 to 1959, he was generally cast as a sardonic villain; a rare exception was his anguished portrayal of Alfred Dreyfus' justice-seeking brother in I Accuse (1958). In the 1960s, he showed up in such crusty character roles as Emperor Xerxes in Rudolph Mate's The 300 Spartans (1962). Shortly after this film, he retired from acting, resettling in South Africa. In 1948, he published his autobiography, No Royal Road. David Farrar was married to actress Irene Elliot.

Trivia: She was a Bronze Medalist graduate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, meanwhile debuting onstage at age 19. She was outstanding character player in both classic and modern plays on London's West End, and occasionally appeared on Broadway. She entered films in 1931, and worked in Hollywood from 1939-46. For her work in Saratoga Trunk she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. While remaining a prominent stage actress, she continued appearing in films intermittently until the early '80s. In recognition of her long, distinguished career, in 1960 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Trivia: A luminous beauty, Jean Simmons was a star in her native Britain and in the U.S. who first appeared onscreen at age 14 in Give Us the Moon (1944), but did not become a true star until she played Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations (1946). In 1948, she was handpicked by Laurence Olivier to play the doomed Ophelia in his classic version of Hamlet and won a Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for her efforts. Simmons traveled to Hollywood in 1950 after marrying Stewart Granger. Their marriage lasted a decade and Simmons then became Mrs. Richard Brooks in 1960, the year he starred her in Elmer Gantry. During the '50s and '60s, Simmons had an extremely busy film career appearing in everything from costume epics to romances to musicals to straight dramas. Simmons received an Oscar nomination in 1969 for The Happy Ending. By the mid-'70s, Simmons started working less frequently and divided her time between features and television work. In the late '80s, she had a burst of character roles, but thereafter, her forays into acting became increasingly sporadic. She died at age 80 in January 2010.

Trivia: Active the London theatrical circles from 1925, British actor Esmond Knight first set foot on a movie sound stage with 1931's The Ringer. His career momentum was almost permanently interrupted in 1941, when, while serving with the Royal Navy, he was temporarily blinded in battle. He regained enough of his sight to resume his filmmaking activities in 1943, appearing in such productions as Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (1944), Black Narcissus (1946) and The Red Shoes (1947), Olivier's Henry V (1945) and Richard III (1955), and Jean Renoir's The River (1951). In 1960, Knight co-starred in Sink the Bismarck (1960), a reenactment of the naval battle in which he'd been blinded 19 years earlier. Long married to actress Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight died in Egypt while filming The Balkan Trilogy.

Trivia: British actress Kathleen Byron made her first film Young Mr. Pitt in 1941, shortly after completing her training at the Old Vic. At first a standard-issue ingenue, Byron displayed a dominant willfulness that resulted in roles as schemers and prevaricators. After big-budget films like A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and Black Narcissus (1948) - giving a rivetting performance in the latter as an insane nun - Ms. Byron was consigned to budget-feature films like The Gambler and the Lady (1952) and Profile (1954). She made several pilgrimages to Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, but her only American film was MGM's Young Bess (1953), set in England. Kathleen Byron remained in films until the 1980s, though she appeared less frequently and the roles diminished in significance.

Trivia: Prior to 1924, British actress Judith Furse worked on stage not only performing but also producing and directing. She went on to play character roles in numerous films, particularly in the '30s and '40s. She was typically cast as a dour, overbearing woman.