Trivia: Balding, deceptively bland-looking British actor Donald Pleasence was first seen on the London stage in a 1939 production of Wuthering Heights. He then served in the RAF, spending the last years of World War II in a German POW camp. Resuming his career after the war, Pleasence eventually came to New York in the company of Laurence Olivier in 1950, appearing in Caesar and Cleopatra. And although he began appearing in films in 1954, Pleasence's British fame during the '50s was the result of his television work, notably a recurring role as Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1955-1958. He also co-starred in TV productions of The Millionairess, Man in a Moon, and Call Me Daddy. Voted British television actor of the year in 1958, Pleasence produced and hosted the 1960 series Armchair Mystery Theatre, before creating the stage role for which he was best remembered: Davies, the menacing tramp in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. The actor revived the character throughout his career, appearing as Davies for the last time in 1991. Pleasence was fortunate enough to be associated with the success of The Great Escape in 1963, which led to a wealth of American film offers. Four years later, the actor portrayed arch criminal Ernst Blofeld in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice -- the first time that the scarred face of the secretive character was seen onscreen in the Bond series. Firmly established as a villain, Pleasence gradually eased into horror films such as Halloween (1978), The Devonsville Terror (1979), and Buried Alive (1990); commenting on this phase of his career, Pleasence once mused "I only appear in odd films." One of his few "mainstream" appearances during this period was virtually invisible. Pleasence is seen and prominently billed as a rabbi in Carl Reiner's Oh, God! (1977), but the role was deemed dispensable and all the actor's lines were cut. Pleasence continued to work steadily in the 1980s and early '90s -- making 17 pictures alone in 1987-1989 -- before undergoing heart surgery in 1994; he died from complications two months later. Married four times, the actor was the father of six daughters, among them actress Angela Pleasence.

Trivia: A tall, rail-thin, charming British actress, she began training for the stage at age 15, and made her professional debut at 16. After joining the Old Vic Company under the direction of Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson, she rose to prominence in the late '40s; over the next decade she became a highly respected actress for her work in both London and Broadway, typically portraying fragile, neurotic women. For her performances in the Broadway plays Separate Tables (1956) and The Night of the Iguana (1962) she won Tony Awards. Onscreen from the late '40s, she appeared in numerous films over nearly three decades. For her work in The Go-Between (1971) she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. She was married to publisher Max Reinhardt, actor Laurence Harvey, and actor Michael Wilding. She died of multiple sclerosis at 53.

Trivia: Manchester native David Warner supported himself as a book salesman while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Warner made his stage bow at the Royal Court Theater in 1962, the same year that he first appeared on television. In 1965, Warner became the youngest-ever member of the Royal Shakespeare Company to tackle the role of Hamlet. In films from 1963 (he played Master Blifil in Tom Jones), Warner achieved international fame for his star turn as the certifiably insane protagonist of Morgan! (1966). His appearance as the village idiot in Straw Dogs (1971) went uncredited due to an injury that rendered him uninsurable on the set; but this was the only time that Warner's contribution to a film would ever go unofficially unheralded. Seldom settling for a normal, sedate characterization, Warner has been seen as Jack the Ripper in Time After Time (1981), the Evil Genius in Time Bandits (1983), Dr. Alfred Necessiter (who had some interior decorator!) in The Man With Two Brains (1984), and genially eccentric Professor Jordan Perry (a good guy, for a change) in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (1992). He has also played two different roles in two consecutive Star Trek films. On television, David Warner has played Heydrich in Holocaust (1978), Pomponius Falco (a performance that won him an Emmy) in Masada (1981), and Bob Cratchit (what-not Scrooge?) in the 1984 adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

Trivia: Preparing for a stage career at Scarborough College and RADA, Ian Carmichael made his first theatrical appearance as a non-speaking robot in a 1939 London production of RUR. Beginning with 1940's Nine Sharp, Carmichael spent well over a decade polishing his comic skills in various musical revues, bearing such titles as What Goes On? and At the Lyric. In films from 1948, he hit his stride in the British comedies of the mid- to late '50s, playing Candide-like bumblers in such droll endeavors as Private's Progress (1955), Lucky Jim (1957), The Brothers in Law (1958), I'm All Right Jack (1959), and School for Scoundrels (1960). On television, Carmichael specialized in such fey upper-class types as P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster and Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey; he also served as director on such productions as Mr. Pastry's Progress, It's a Small World, and We Beg to Differ. In 1979, he published his open-ended autobiography, Will the Real Ian Carmichael.... Carmichael died at age 89 in February 2010.

Trivia: Imperious, intellectual-looking British actor Peter Cushing studied for a theatrical career under the guidance of Cairns James at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Cushing supported himself as a clerk in a surveyor's office before making his first professional stage appearance in 1935. Four years later, he came to America, where he was featured in a handful of Broadway plays and Hollywood feature films. He had a small part in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) and also doubled for Louis Hayward in the "twin" scenes; he was among the rather overaged students in Laurel and Hardy's A Chump at Oxford (1940); and he was second male lead in the Carole Lombard vehicle Vigil in the Night (1940). After closing out his Hollywood tenure with They Dare Not Love (1941), he returned to stage work in England. His next film appearance was as Osric in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), which also featured his future co-star Christopher Lee in a nonspeaking bit (Cushing and Lee's paths would cross again cinematically in Moulin Rouge [1952], though, as in Hamlet, they shared no scenes).In the early '50s, Cushing became a TV star by virtue of his performance in the BBC production of George Orwell's 1984. Still, film stardom would elude him until 1957, when he was cast as Baron Frankenstein in Hammer Films' The Curse of Frankenstein. It was the first of 19 appearances under the Hammer banner; Cushing went on to play Van Helsing in Horror of Dracula (1958) and Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), roles which, like Baron Frankenstein, he would repeat time and again. Though his horror film appearances brought him fame and fortune, Cushing ruefully commented that he'd prefer not to be so tightly typecast: It is significant that his entry in the British publication Who's Who in the Theatre lists all of his theatrical credits, but only one title -- Hamlet -- in his film manifest. In 1975, after a decade's absence, Cushing made a return to the theater in Washington Square, ironically playing the role originated on Broadway by fellow Sherlock Holmes interpreter Basil Rathbone. Many of Cushing's later film assignments were in the tongue-in-cheek category, notably his sneeringly evil Governor Tarkin in Star Wars (1977) and his backwards-talking librarian in Top Secret! (1984). Retiring from the screen in 1986, Peter Cushing penned two volumes of memoirs: An Autobiography (1986) and Past Forgetting (1988).

Trivia: Is perhaps best known for her role as Lady Duff-Gordon in the 1997 romantic epic Titanic. In 2011, provided the voice and motion capture performance for the main antagonist of the video game Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Runs the radio production company Jarvis & Ayres Productions alongside her husband. Received the UK Radio Academy's award for Best Drama and Readings Producer. Is a supporter of the National Brain Appeal.

Trivia: A respected character actor and occasional leading man of the stage, screen, and television, Scottish-born Ian Bannen acted in over 80 productions during his long career. Shortly after enrolling at Ratcliffe College, Bannen, who was born in Airdrie, Scotland, on June 29, 1918, made his first stage appearance at Dublin's Gate Theatre. A year after making his 1955 London theatrical debut, he entered films with A Private's Progress and Battle Hell. A prolific stage actor (with a special fondness for the works of Eugene O'Neill), Bannen nonetheless found time for quite a few impressive film characterizations. One of these, the cynical Crow in Flight of the Phoenix (1965), earned him an Academy Award nomination. His later screen assignments ranged from a cameo as a policeman in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982) to the irascible Grandfather George in John Boorman's Hope and Glory (1987) to a turn as Robert the Bruce's leprous father in Braveheart (1995). It was with the 1998 comedy Waking Ned Devine that Bannen earned some of his best notices, playing a loveably crafty Irishman. Sadly, Bannen's life was cut short the following year, as he died in an auto accident on November 3, 1999, near Loch Ness, Scotland. He was survived by his wife of 23 years, as well as a rich theatrical legacy that stretched over almost half a century.

Trivia: Promoted in the 1950s as "the English Marilyn Monroe," curvaceous blonde Briton Diana Dors in fact began her screen career long before Marilyn did, and was a far better actress. The daughter of a railroad employee, Diana was a stage performer from adolescence, and in films from the age of 15. She attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, then rose to film stardom in sexy "party girl" roles. By the mid-1950s, she was permitted a few solid dramatic assignments (Yield to the Night was one of the best) and not a few comedy parts (she was George Gobel's co-star in RKO's I Married a Woman). In the late 1960s, Diana continued to be cast in worthwhile supporting roles, notably as the ex-wife of Peter Sellers in There's a Girl in My Soup (1972), though films like these were outnumbered by such tripe as Swedish Wildcats (1974). In the years before her death from meningitis, Diana devoted most of her time to religious and charity work. At one time, Diana Dors was the wife of comedian/TV emcee Richard Dawson.

Trivia: British actress Angela Pleasence has specialized in playing supporting roles in offbeat feature films and especially in made-for-television movies and miniseries. The daughter of character actor Donald Pleasence, she made her film debut in Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968) and her television debut in Ladies: A Double Bill (1969).

Trivia: Noted for being a prominent figure among first-generation British television actors, Nyree Dawn Porter achieved stardom after appearing in The Forsyth Saga (1967), the BBC's first major international export and the first BBC series to be sold to the Soviet Union.Born in New Zealand and later changing her name to the English phonetic pronunciation, Porter's other prominent works included prominent roles in the BBC's highly praised Madam Bovary (1964), as well as guest roles in such seminal British television series as The Avengers and The Saint. After appearing in such other period pieces as Jane Eyre (1970) and later starring opposite Robert Vaughn in the 1972 television series The Protectors, Porter was cast in the popular Martian Chronicles (1979) miniseries. Her final role came in 1998's Hillary and Jackie.Britain lost one of its most beloved actresses when Nyree Dawn Porter died of unreported causes at a London hospital. She was 61.

Trivia: British stage and film actor Ian Ogilvy was able to obtain leading-man roles in both mediums despite his relatively short, slight frame. His entree into films was by way of such horrific productions as The Sorcerers (1967) and The Witchfinder General (1968). Casual American TV viewers first became aware of Ogilvy through his appearances in such Masterpiece Theatre serials as "The Spoils of Poynton" and "Upstairs Downstairs;" and in 1978, the actor stepped into the Simon Templar role vacated by Roger Moore in TV's The Return of the Saint. Ian Ogilvy also appeared as Reginald Hewitt in the American-produced daytime drama Generations, which ran from 1989 to 1991.

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: British character actor, onscreen from the '50s.