Trivia: One of the greatest comic talents of his generation, Peter Sellers had an exceptional gift for losing himself in a character -- so much so that, beyond his remarkable skill as a performer and his fondness for the humor of the absurd, it's difficult to draw a connection between many of his best performances. While his fondness for playing multiple roles in the same film may have seemed like a stunt coming from many other actors, Sellers had the ability to make each character he played seem distinct and different, and while he was known and loved as a funnyman, only in a handful of roles was he able to explore the full range of his gifts, which suggested he could have had just as strong a career as a dramatic actor.Born Richard Henry Sellers on September 8, 1925, Sellers was nicknamed "Peter" by his parents, Bill and Agnes Sellers, in memory of his brother, who was a stillbirth. Bill and Agnes made their living as performers on the British vaudeville circuit, and Sellers made his first appearance on-stage only two days after his birth, when his father brought out his infant son during an encore. As a child, Sellers studied dance at the behest of his parents when not occupied with his studies at St. Aloysius' Boarding and Day School for Boys. Sellers also developed a knack for music, and in his teens began playing drums with local dance bands. Shortly after his 18th birthday, Sellers joined the Royal Air Force, and became part of a troupe of entertainers who performed at RAF camps both in England and abroad. During his time in the service, Sellers met fellow comedians Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and Michael Bentine; after the war, they found work as performers with the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Sellers hoped to follow suit. After several failed auditions, Sellers struck upon the idea of calling Roy Speer, a BBC producer, posing as one of the network's top actors. Sellers gave Sellers an enthusiastic recommendation, and Speer gave him a spot on the radio series Show Time.After he signed on with the BBC, Sellers became reacquainted with Milligan, Secombe, and Bentine, and together they comprised the cast of The Goon Show, which upon its debut in 1949 became one of Great Britain's most popular radio shows; the absurd and often surreal humor of the Goons would prove to be the first glimmer of the British Comedy Movement of the '60s and '70s, paving the way for Beyond the Fringe and Monty Python's Flying Circus. The Goon Show provided Sellers with his entry into film acting, as he appeared in several short comedies alongside Milligan and Secombe, as well as the feature film Down Among the Z Men (aka The Goon Movie). Sellers also married for the first time during the height of Goon-mania, wedding Anne Howe in the fall of 1951. Sellers won his first significant non-Goon screen role in 1955, with the classic Alec Guinness comedy The Ladykillers, but his first international hit would have to wait until 1958, when he appeared in George Pal's big-budget musical Tom Thumb. In 1959, Sellers appeared in the satiric comedy I'm All Right, Jack, which earned him Best Actor honors from the British Film Academy; the same year, Sellers enjoyed a major international success with The Mouse That Roared, in which he played three different roles (one of them a woman). While a bona-fide international comedy star, Sellers had a hard time finding roles that made the most of his talents, and it wasn't until after a handful of unremarkable features that he received a pair of roles that allowed him to truly shine. In 1961, Sellers starred as an Indian physician in The Millionairess opposite Sophia Loren, based on a play by George Bernard Shaw (Sellers and Loren would also record a comic song together, "Goodness Gracious Me," which was a hit single in Britain), and a year later Stanley Kubrick cast him as Claire Quilty in his controversial adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita.1964 would prove to be a very big year for Peter Sellers; he would marry actress Britt Ekland in February of that year (his marriage to Anne Howe ended in divorce in 1961), and he starred in four of his most memorable films: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which reunited him with Stanley Kubrick and gave him star turns in three different roles; The World of Henry Orient, a comedy which won a small but devoted cult following; The Pink Panther, in which Sellers gave his first performance as the bumbling French detective Inspector Clouseau, and that film's first sequel, A Shot in the Dark. Sellers, who was described by many who knew him as a workaholic, maintained a busy schedule over the next ten years, but while the quality of his own work was consistently strong, many of the films he appeared in were sadly undistinguished, with a handful of exceptions, among them I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, The Wrong Box, and The Optimists. Sellers' appeal at the box office began to wane, and his love life took a beating as well -- he divorced Britt Ekland in 1968 and married Miranda Quarry in 1969, only to see that marriage end in 1971. But Sellers made a striking comeback in 1974 with The Return of the Pink Panther, in which he revisited his role as Inspector Clouseau. The film was a massive international hit, and Sellers would play Clouseau two more times, in The Pink Panther Strikes Again and The Revenge of the Pink Panther, though he became critical of the formulaic material in the films and would begin writing a script for a sixth Pink Panther film without the input of Blake Edwards, who had written and directed the other films in the series.In 1977, Sellers took his fourth wife, actress Lynne Frederick, and he managed to rack up a few moderate box-office successes outside the Pink Panther series with Murder by Death and The Prisoner of Zenda. But in 1979, Sellers gave perhaps his greatest performance ever as Chance, a simpleton gardener whose babblings about plants are seen as deep metaphors by those around them, in a screen adaptation of Jerzy Kozinski's novel Being There -- a project Sellers had spent the better part of a decade trying to bring to the screen. The film won Sellers a Golden Globe award and a National Board of Review citation as Best Actor, while he also received an Academy Award nomination in the same category. While Being There seemed to point to better and more ambitious roles for Sellers, fate had other plans; the actor, who had a long history of heart trouble, died of a heart attack on July 24, 1980, not long after completing The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, a disastrous comedy whose direction was taken over by Sellers midway through the shoot (though the original director received sole credit). Two years after his death, Peter Sellers would return to the screen in a final Pink Panther adventure, The Trail of the Pink Panther, which Blake Edwards assembled from outtakes and discarded scenes shot for the previous installments in the series.

Trivia: Born Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru, Herbert Lom enjoyed a successful acting career in his native Czechoslovakia, principally in theater. He made his screen debut in Zena Pod Krizem (1937) and made one more movie in Czechoslovakia before emigrating to England in 1938. He acted at The Old Vic in London, among other companies, before turning to British films, where his good looks, cultured accent and mannerisms, and intense eyes got him cast in such unusual roles as Napoleon Bonaparte (in The Young Mr. Pitt) in between slightly more anonymous parts. Lom's real breakthrough role was in Compton Bennett's 1946 psychological drama The Seventh Veil, as Dr. Larsen, the psychiatrist treating neuroses of the pianist portrayed by Ann Todd. Lom might have become a kind of Eastern (or Middle) European successor to Charles Boyer, but he was too good an actor to limit himself to romantic parts; instead, he was more like a Czech Jean Gabin. Lom often played highly motivated villains in the 1950s and '60s, most notably in Jules Dassin's Night and the City (1950), in which he brought surprising humanity to the role of a brutal, vengeful gangster, and Sidney Gilliat's State Secret (1950). He reprised the role of Napoleon in King Vidor's sprawling 1956 production of War and Peace, and was a memorably humane, well-spoken Captain Nemo in the Ray Harryhausen production of Mysterious Island (1961); he also played the title role in a 1962 production of The Phantom of the Opera, but Lom's best movie during this period -- despite having some of his shortest screen time -- was Anthony Mann's El Cid, in which he played the Muslim leader Ben Yussuf. He counter-balanced this work with a newly revealed flair for comedy, utilized in the Pink Panther movies, starting with A Shot in the Dark, where his long-suffering bureau chief Dreyfus was forever dreading Inspector Clouseau's latest blunder. He was also Simon Legree in the 1965 German musical production of Uncle Tom's Cabin (as Onkel Tom's Hütte). During the late '60s and '70s, he began appearing in horror films of various types, following a path similar to that blazed by his British-born contemporary Michael Gough. He has kept his hand in gentler and more complex roles, however, including that of the sardonically humorous Soviet bureau chief in Ronald Neame's Hopscotch (1980), and a sympathetic physician in David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983). In 2012, Lom passed away in his sleep at the age of 95.

Trivia: Irish stage, film and TV actor Colin Blakely worked as a sporting goods salesman before turning to acting in his late 20s. Starting out in theatres in Belfast and Wales, he made his 1959 London debut in Sean O'Casey's Cock-a-Doodle-Dandy. Blakely spent most of the 1960s associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Making his first film, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in 1960, Blakely kept busy before the cameras until the mid-1980s in an exhausting variety of characterizations. Among his more sizeable movie roles was Dr. Watson in 1969's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Colin Blakely's final appearance was in the Masterpiece Theatre TV multiparter Paradise Postponed (1986).

Trivia: Storklike British comic actor Leonard Rossiter came to films by way of the revue stage. His most prolific film years were 1965 through 1980, during which time his earthy humor brightened such overblown features as Hotel Paradiso (1966), Oliver (1968) and Barry Lyndon (1974). His best-remembered appearance during this period was as Quinlan in the Peter Sellers/Blake Edwards comedy The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976). Leonard Rossiter died in harness, collapsing during a London stage appearance in 1984.

Trivia: British actress Lesley-Ann Down became a celebrity at a very young age, thanks to her winning several teen beauty contests. In films since the age of 15, Down achieved international prominence for her recurring appearances as Lady Georgina on the British TV serial Upstairs, Downstairs, which ran from 1976 through 1977. At that same time, she became an alluring movie sex symbol by virtue of her co-starring turn in The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976).Down's television work has been most rewarding, including a starring role as bewitching Southern belle Madeline Main in the 1985 miniseries North and South and its 1986 sequel. As colorful a personality off-camera as on, Down has been linked romantically with several high-profile males, and was briefly and tempestuously wed to director William Friedkin.

Trivia: Born in England and raised in Shanghai, actor Burt Kwouk can best be described as a funnier variation of Bruce Lee. To be sure, many of his acting assignments have called for straight interpretations, notably his roles in such films Satan Never Sleeps (1961) and The Brides of Fu Manchu (1965). But Kwouk is best known for his role as karate champ Cato Fong, right-hand man of the hapless Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers). Trained by his boss to attack without warning (the better to keep Clouseau on guard and in shape), Cato has invariably done his job too well, kicking and chopping at the Inspector at the most inopportune times -- when Clouseau is making love, for example. As Cato, Bert Kwouk has appeared in the Blake Edwards-directed Clouseau films A Shot in the Dark (1964), Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1978) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1979), and has guest-starred in two pastiche films made after Peter Sellers' death, Curse of the Pink Panther (1981) and Trail of the Pink Panther (1982). Outside the aegis of Blake Edwards, Kwouk has taken action-oriented parts in films like Rollerball (1980) and Air America (1990). For several years in the '80s, Kwouk played a Japanese commandant on the British TV series Tenko. Kwouk continued to work steadily through the 2010s, including a recurring role on Last of the Summer Wine. He died in 2016, at age 85.

Trivia: British character actor Richard Vernon specialized in playing dignified, stiff upper-lipped nobles, military officers, and patriarchs in a wide variety of films and television programs. Though he had an uncredited bit part in Indiscreet (1958), Vernon did not make his formal film debut until he played Sir Edgar Hargreaves in Village of the Damned (1960).

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '60s.

Trivia: In films from the early 1940s, American actor Phil Brown held down supporting roles in most of his Hollywood films. Brown was eighth-billed as Jimmy Brown in his earliest screen credit, the Paramount aviation epic I Wanted Wings (1941). He was disturbingly convincing as a homicidal maniac in Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942), snapping from normality to viciousness within seconds in several scenes. In The Killers (1946), Brown played Nick Adams, who in the Hemingway story on which the film was based was the narrator but who wound up with little more than a bystander part in the film's opening scene. Moving to Europe in 1950, Brown was put to good use as the victim of a jealous husband in the British-filmed Obsession (1949), released in America as The Hidden Room. Phil Brown remained in England and the Continent for the balance of his career.

Trivia: Robert Beatty spent his early adulthood in Canada as a gas-company cashier, salesman and amateur actor. Upon arriving in London, Beatty enrolled at the RADA, making his film debut as an extra and stand-in. During World War II, Beatty achieved fame through his eyewitness radio reports of the nightly London bombings. In most of his postwar film, stage, radio and TV work, Beatty was cast as a rough-hewn American or Canadian. One of his favorite stage roles was rude 'n' crude American junk dealer Harry Brock in Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday. He also played more than his share of detectives, most prominently as radio's Phillip O'Dell, and on the 1958 TV series Dial 999. Beatty was given a chance to demonstrate his versatility in the dual role of a milquetoast British hubby and a slick Italian gangster in Her Favorite Husband (1950). Later film roles included Lord Beaverbrook in The Magic Box (1951), Halvorsen in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and two separate characters in Superman III (1980) and Superman IV (1984). On television, Robert Beatty was seen in the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977, as Proculus) and The Martian Chronicles (1980), and as President Ronald Reagan in the 1987 PBS special Breakthrough at Reykajavik.

Trivia: British actor Dudley Sutton came to films when "punk" characters were in demand. His first film, a gritty exploration of the British motorcyle culture called The Leather Boys (1963), seemed to bode well for future leading roles. By the mid '60s, however, Sutton's parts were in the character and supporting category. Later films to Dudley Sutton's credit included Rotten to the Core (1965), Crossplot (1969) and The Devils (1971).

Trivia: In films from 1956, British actress Vanda Godsell specialized in playing disheveled housewives, busybody landladies, and blowsy domestics. She always seemed to be "Mrs." Somebody: Mrs. Weaver in This Sporting Life (1963), Mrs. Pitt in Bitter Harvest (1965), Mrs. Goodge in Wrong Box (1967), and so on. Blake Edwards tapped her services in two of his Inspector Clouseau films, A Shot in the Dark (1964) and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1978). Vanda Godsell also worked steadily on British TV.

Trivia: Typically cast as someone's devoted mother or a charwoman, character-actress Patsy Smart had a steady but rather undistinguished film career that began in The Mailbag Robbery(1957) and culminated with Electric Dreams (1987). She has also appeared much on television in programs that include Secret Agent, The Avenger, and Q.E.D.

Trivia: Over the course of a career that spanned seven decades, Omar Sharif played every ethnic type imaginable: Spanish, Mongolian, Yugoslavian, Turkish, Russian, Jewish, Argentinian, Mexican, and -- most improbably -- a German serving as a Nazi officer (in 1967's Night of the Generals). That was the nature of his smoldering, swarthy good looks: Every race wanted to claim him as their own. The first Arab actor to achieve worldwide fame, Sharif nonetheless could never match the splash he made with two of his earliest English-language features, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.Omar Sharif was born Michel Demetri Shalhoub on April 10, 1932, to a well-to-do Lebanese Christian family in Alexandria, Egypt. His father was a lumber merchant, while his mother was a socialite whose guests included King Farouk (and who sent her pudgy son to a British-style boarding school so he would lose weight eating the blander food.) He had a natural intelligence for numbers and language, and by the time he graduated from Cairo University with a degree in mathematics and physics, he could speak five languages (including Arabic, English, and French). After graduation, he worked alongside his father in the family lumber business, but his unused talents made him restless for bigger success.Egypt was known as "the Hollywood of the Middle East" in the 1950s, producing more than 100 Arabic-language films a year. Hoping to break into the movies, Shalhoub chose the new moniker "Omar Sharif"; he reasoned Westerners would be familiar with Gen. Omar Bradley, and "Sharif" was similar to "sheriff." In 1954, director Youssef Chahine offered his friend a part in Shaytan Al-Sahra ("Devil of the Desert"), followed by a leading role in Siraa Fil-Wadi ("Struggle to the Valley") opposite Egyptian actress Faten Hamama, a pretty girl-next-door type who had been beloved by Cairo audiences ever since her debut as a child star. A romance soon blossomed between the co-stars; Sharif eventually converted to Islam in order to marry her, and Hamama allowed him to kiss her onscreen, which she had not agreed to do with any other co-star. The duo made seven more movies together, and had a son named Tarek in 1957.Sharif's smoldering yet dignified box-office appeal spread from Egypt to European art-house cinemas, and eventually caught the attention of British director David Lean, who was casting Arabic actors for his biopic of T.E. Lawrence. Sharif's fluency in English put him ahead of the rest of the contenders, and he won the role of Sherif Ali Ibn El Karish in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Even though the 100-day shoot in the desert -- "without women," the actor later lamented -- tried the entire cast's patience, Sharif enjoyed working under Lean and earned the respect of the notoriously actor-hating director through his dedication. Similarly, Sharif became great friends with Peter O'Toole, declaring that he and his co-star were "like brothers" who, after shooting wrapped, vowed to work together again should any occasion arise.Sharif's role in Lawrence of Arabia made him an international star and won him Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actor and Most Promising Newcomer, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Doctor Zhivago (1965), his next film for Lean (which included a cameo by his son Tarek as the younger version of his character), cemented his position as a superstar. Doctor Zhivago was an unprecedented smash, making more than 100 million dollars at the box office (over 750 million today, when adjusted for inflation), and earning ten Academy Award nominations and five wins.These two blockbusters made Sharif a star, but he considered it a devil's bargain. Without an agent to act on his behalf, he signed a seven-year contract with Columbia that put his fee at what some sources say was as low as 15,000 dollars per film -- even for hits like Funny Girl (1968). Long sojourns in Europe and the U.S. took him away from Hamama and their son, and a combination of political difficulties reentering Egypt and temptations while away from home weakened their marriage. Acknowledging that Hamama was the love of his life, but paradoxically rationalizing that it would be better to leave her while she was relatively young and could remarry, the pair divorced in 1974.As Sharif's career began a slow downward slide in the mid-'70s, with roles in stinkers like Oh, Heavenly Dog! (1980) and Inchon (1981), his personal life also became cluttered with flings, including one with Italian journalist Paola De Luca that led to a son named Ruben. Rather than concentrate on acting, Sharif instead devoted more and more time to his passion for the card game bridge, writing several books and a syndicated newspaper column about the strategy of the game, as well as lending his name to video-game simulations. He eventually became one of the highest-ranked bridge players in the world, and his love for the game was so great that sometimes he would refuse film roles because the shooting schedule conflicted with bridge tournaments.While Sharif's last decades were mostly devoted to a laissez-faire lifestyle as an intercontinental playboy, living in hotels and frequenting casinos, he did make some onscreen appearances. He played a supporting role in 2004's Hidalgo (in which he demanded -- and received -- rewrites for dialogue he found insulting toward Muslims) and narrated the epic-fantasy film 10,000 B.C. (2008). But his final cinematic triumph was in Monsieur Ibrahim (2003), a heartfelt coming-of-age drama set in 1950s Paris about the unlikely friendship between a kindly Muslim shopkeeper and a Jewish teen. The movie earned praise from critics and won Sharif a Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival and a Best Actor César (the French equivalent of the Oscars).His last years were, regrettably, marred by colorful public incidents, including headbutting a policeman in a casino in suburban Paris and punching a parking-lot attendant in Beverly Hills. But this churlish behavior might have been a harbinger of Alzheimer's disease, which blackened his final days. After completing a swan-song cameo in The Secret Scripture with his grandson Omar Sharif Jr., and only six months following the death of Faten Hamama, the woman he still regarded as "the love of my life," Sharif succumbed to a fatal heart attack in Cairo on July 10, 2015.

Trivia: American actor Jackie Cooper was in movies at the age of three; his father had abandoned the family when Jackie was two, forcing his mother to rely upon the boy's acting income to keep food on the table. Shortly after earning his first featured part in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Cooper was hired for producer Hal Roach's "Our Gang" two-reeler series, appearing in 15 shorts over the next two years. The "leading man" in many of these comedies, he was most effective in those scenes wherein he displayed a crush on his new teacher, the beauteous Miss Crabtree. On the strength of "Our Gang," Paramount Pictures signed Cooper for the title role in the feature film Skippy (1931), which earned the boy an Oscar nomination. A contract with MGM followed, and for the next five years Cooper was frequently co-starred with blustery character player Wallace Beery. Cooper outgrew his preteen cuteness by the late 1930s, and was forced to accept whatever work that came along, enjoying the occasional plum role in such films as The Return of Frank James (1940) and What a Life! (1941). His priorities rearranged by his wartime Naval service, Cooper returned to the states determined to stop being a mere "personality" and to truly learn to be an actor. This he did on Broadway and television, notably as the star of two popular TV sitcoms of the 1950s, The People's Choice and Hennessey. Cooper developed a taste for directing during this period (he would earn an Emmy for his directorial work on M*A*S*H in 1973), and also devoted much of his time in the 1960s to the production end of the business; in 1965 he was appointed vice-president in charge of production at Screen Gems, the TV subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. From the early 1970s onward, Cooper juggled acting, producing and directing with equal aplomb. Modern audiences know Cooper best as the apoplectic Perry White in the Christopher Reeve Superman films. In 1981, Cooper surprised (and sometimes shocked) his fans with a warts-and-all autobiography, Please Don't Shoot My Dog. Cooper died in May 2011 at the age of 88 following a sudden illness.

Trivia: Though perhaps best remembered for performing on the long-running BBC radio series Ignorance Is Bliss, comedian Harold Berens also appeared in nearly 200 films, from the mid-'40s through the early '90s. The Glasgow native started out in the late '30s, performing in English variety shows. Berens made his feature film debut in Candlelight in Algeria (1944) and made his final film appearance in Carry on Columbus (1992). Ofttimes, Berens limited his film appearances to cameo roles.

Trivia: A British character actor, Bayldon was onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: British comic actor Graham Stark has contributed innumerable cameo roles to both films and television. His busiest era was the '60s, during which time he appeared in such class-A productions as Becket (1964) and Alfie (1966). Seldom arising above the "also in the cast" ranks, Graham Stark was memorable in a role for which he had his back to the camera for the most part and said little more than "Oui, monsieur." Stark was Hercule Lajoy, Inspector Clouseau's stonefaced assistant, in A Shot in the Dark (1964), and as such he sat in passive obesciance as Clouseau (Peter Sellers) toted up the clues in a murder case and barked "Facts, Hercule! Facts!" -- just before falling on his face or pinching his fingers.

Trivia: British multi-hyphenate Chris Langham achieved fame and success over the course of four decades, as an actor, screenwriter, and occasional director, almost always in the comedic vein. Langham first cropped up during the early '70s, with guest appearances on at least two Spike Milligan specials and bit parts in such vehicles as The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Sink or Swim (1977). He netted broader recognition at the tail end of the decade, as a multi-role player in the Monty Python biblical spoof The Life of Brian, as one of the regulars on the seminal U.K. comedy series Not the Nine o' Clock News (1979), and one of the occasional scripters on Jim Henson's The Muppet Show. By the mid- to late '80s, the actor branched out into occasional dramatic turns, such as the 1985 telemovie Silas Marner and the 1988 docudrama Apprentice to Murder, but he continued to make greatest impact on U.K. television, in such popular series as Kiss Me Kate, Clive Anderson Talks Back, and Help.

Trivia: The son a well-to-do British Army captain who died in the battle of Gallipoli in 1915, David Niven was shipped off to a succession of boarding schools by his stepfather, who didn't care much for the boy. Young Niven hated the experience and was a poor student, but his late father's reputation helped him get admitted to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and he was later commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry. Rakishly handsome and naturally charming, Lt. Niven met a number of high society members while stationed in Malta, and, through their auspices, made several important contacts while attending parties. Although he later claimed to have been nothing more than a wastrel-like "professional guest" at this stage of his life, Niven was actually excellent company, a superb raconteur, and a loyal friend, and he paid back his social obligations by giving lavish parties of his own once he become famous. Niven also insisted that he fell into acting without any prior interest, although he had done amateur theatricals in college.Following his military discharge, Niven wandered the world working odd jobs ranging from a lumberjack to a gunnery instructor for Cuban revolutionaries to (by his own account) a petty thief. He became a Hollywood extra in 1935, and eventually came to the attention of producer Samuel Goldwyn, who had been building up a stable of attractive young contract players. Having made his speaking debut in Without Regret (1935), Niven quickly learned how to successfully get through a movie scene. After several secondary roles for Goldwyn, he was loaned out for a lead role in the 20th Century Fox feature Thank You, Jeeves (1936). The actor formed lasting friendships with several members of Hollywood's British community -- notably Errol Flynn, with whom he briefly lived -- and was quite popular with the American-born contingent as well, especially the ladies.Although he worked steadily in the '30s, it was usually in support of bigger stars; he was seldom permitted to carry a film by himself, except for such modest productions as Dinner at the Ritz (1937) and Raffles (1939). Anxious to do something more substantial than act during World War II, Niven re-entered the British service as a Lieutenant Colonel, where he served nobly, if not spectacularly. (His batman, or valet, during the war was a Pvt. Peter Ustinov, himself an actor of no mean talent.) Married by the end of the war, Niven went back to films but found that he still wasn't getting any important roles; despite ten years experience, he was considered too "lightweight" to be a major name. His life momentarily shattered by the accidental death of his wife in 1946, Niven's spirit was restored by his second marriage to Swedish model Hjordis Tersmeden, his wife of 37 years until the actor's death. Once again, Niven took a self-deprecating attitude towards his domestic life, claiming to be a poor husband and worse father, but despite the time spent away from his family, they cherished his concern and affection for them.After his Goldwyn contract ended in 1949, Niven marked time with inconsequential movies before joining Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, and Ida Lupino to form Four Star, a television production company. Niven was finally able to choose strong dramatic roles for himself, becoming one of TV's first and most prolific stars, although his public still preferred him as a light comedian. The actor's film career also took an upswing in the '50s with starring performances in the controversial The Moon Is Blue (1953) -- a harmless concoction which was denied a Production Code seal because the word "virgin" was bandied about -- and the mammoth Around the World in 80 Days (1956), in which Niven played his most famous role, erudite 19th century globetrotter Phileas Fogg. When Laurence Olivier dropped out of the 1958 film Separate Tables, Niven stepped in to play an elderly, disgraced British military man. Although he was as flippant about the part as usual -- telling an interviewer, "They gave me very good lines and then cut to Deborah Kerr while I was saying them" -- he won an Oscar for this performance. Niven continued his career as a high-priced, A-list actor into the '60s, returning to television in the stylish "caper" series The Rogues in 1964. He revisited his hobby of writing in the early '70s; an earlier novel, Round the Ragged Rocks, didn't sell very well, but gave him pleasure while working on it. But two breezy autobiographies did better: The Moon's a Balloon (1972) and Bring on the Empty Horse (1975). Working alone, without help of a ghostwriter (as opposed to many celebrity authors), Niven was able to entertainingly transfer his charm and wit to the printed page (even if he seldom let the facts impede his storytelling). In 1982, Niven discovered he was suffering from a neurological illness commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, which would prove fatal within a year. Courageously keeping up a front with his friends and the public, Niven continued making media appearances, although he was obviously deteriorating. While appearing in his last film, Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), the actor's speech became so slurred due to his illness that his lines were later dubbed by impressionist Rich Little. Refusing all artificial life-support systems, Niven died in his Switzerland home later that year. While his career produced a relatively small legacy of worthwhile films, and despite his own public attitude that his life had been something of an elaborate fraud, Niven left behind countless friends and family members who adored him. Indeed, journalists sent out to "dig up dirt" following the actor's death came back amazed (and perhaps secretly pleased) that not one person could find anything bad to say about David Niven.

Trivia: Anglo-Indian character actor, onscreen from the '50s; he often plays Arabs and Asians.

Trivia: An internationally known beauty with a husky voice, Claudia Cardinale was once groomed to be Italy's answer to Brigitte Bardot, as well as a replacement for Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, both of whom had defected to Hollywood. In 1957, Cardinale won the "most beautiful girl in Tunisia" contest and, as her prize, attended the Venice Film Festival. She later took drama lessons at Rome's Centro Sperimentale film school and, shortly thereafter, landed secondary roles in several films. Producer Franco Cristaldi began molding her career, turning her into a sex symbol, and the two later married. She was an established international star by the early '60s, although she never attained the success of Bardot, Lollobrigida, or Loren; however, she did make many notable films, working with (among others) such directors as Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Manolo Bolognini, Luigi Comencini, Sergio Leone, Blake Edwards, and Richard Brooks -- for example, Fellini cast her as herself, the object of star Marcello Mastroianni's erotic daydreams in the film 8 1/2 (1963).

Trivia: One of the precious few actors of the "pretty boy" school to survive past the 1950s, Robert Wagner was the son of a Detroit steel executive. When his family moved to Los Angeles, Wagner's original intention of becoming a businessman took second place to his fascination with the film industry. Thanks to his dad's connections, he was able to make regular visits to the big studios. Inevitably, a talent scout took notice of Wagner's boyish handsomeness, impressive physique, and easygoing charm. After making his unbilled screen debut in The Happy Years (1950), Wagner was signed by 20th Century Fox, which carefully built him up toward stardom. He played romantic leads with ease, but it wasn't until he essayed the two scene role of a shellshocked war veteran in With a Song in My Heart (1952) that studio executives recognized his potential as a dramatic actor. He went on to play the title roles in Prince Valiant (1954) and The True Story of Jesse James (1956), and shocked his bobby-soxer fan following by effectively portraying a cold-blooded murderer in A Kiss Before Dying (1955). In the early '60s, however, Wagner suffered a series of personal and professional reverses. His "ideal" marriage to actress Natalie Wood had dissolved, and his film career skidded to a stop after The Pink Panther (1964). Two years of unemployment followed before Wagner made a respectable comeback as star of the lighthearted TV espionage series It Takes a Thief (1968-1970). For the rest of his career, Wagner would enjoy his greatest success on TV, first in the mid-'70s series Switch, then opposite Stefanie Powers in the internationally popular Hart to Hart, which ran from 1979 through 1983 and has since been sporadically revived in TV-movie form (a 1986 series, Lime Street, was quickly canceled due to the tragic death of Wagner's young co-star, Savannah Smith). On the domestic front, Wagner was briefly wed to actress Marion Marshall before remarrying Natalie Wood in 1972; after Wood's death in 1981, Wagner found lasting happiness with his third wife, Jill St. John, a longtime friend and co-worker. Considered one of Hollywood's nicest citizens, Robert Wagner has continued to successfully pursue a leading man career into his sixties; he has also launched a latter-day stage career, touring with his Hart to Hart co-star Stefanie Power in the "readers' theater" presentation Love Letters. He found success playing a henchman to Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies, and in 2007 he began playing Teddy, a recurring role on the hit CBS series Two and a Half Men.

Trivia: To call British character actor Gordon Rollings a clown would have been to compliment him, for that is what he originally trained to be. Though best remembered for his work on television and in commercials, Rollings also appeared in a few feature films and on-stage.