Trivia: Lead and former juvenile actress Fiona Fullerton first appeared onscreen at age 14 in 1969.

Trivia: Emerging onto the British show-business scene as a boy soprano, Michael Crawford sang in the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Though he made a fleeting film appearance in 1950, Crawford would not become a full-fledged professional until dropping out of high school at age 15. His first important film assignment was the 1958 kiddie-matinee programmer Soap Box Derby. He enjoyed a flurry of film activity in the mid- to late '60s, playing such singing roles as Hero in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and Cornelius Hackel in Hello, Dolly! (1969). The best of his non-musical film appearances during this period was as the fatally ineffectual Goodman in How I Won the War (1967). His British TV-series assignments have included Sir Francis Drake (1962), Some Mothers Do Have 'Em (1974-1979), and Chalk and Cheese (1979). A familiar presence in West End theatrical productions from 1965, Crawford made his musical comedy bow as star of the London production of Barnum!. In 1988, he won a Tony award for his portrayal of the title character in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. Michael Crawford has since performed the score of Phantom, along with selections from other Lloyd Webber hits, as a solo concert artist.

Trivia: Sir Ralph Richardson was one of the most esteemed British actors of the 20th century and one of his country's most celebrated eccentrics. Well into old age, he continued to enthrall audiences with his extraordinary acting skills -- and to irritate neighbors with his noisy motorbike outings, sometimes with a parrot on his shoulder. He collected paintings, antiquities, and white mice; acted Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Sophocles; and instructed theatergoers on the finer points of role-playing: "Acting," he said in a Time article, "is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing." Like the Dickens characters he sometimes portrayed, Richardson had a distinctly memorable attribute: a bulbous nose that sabotaged his otherwise noble countenance and made him entirely right for performances in tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies. In testament to his knowledge of poetry and rhyme, he married a woman named Meriel after his first wife, Muriel, died. Fittingly, Ralph David Richardson was born in Shakespeare country -- the county of Gloucestershire -- in the borough of Cheltenham on December 19, 1902. There, his father taught art at Cheltenham Ladies' College. When he was a teenager, Ralph enrolled at Brighton School to take up the easel and follow in his father's brushstrokes. However, after receiving an inheritance of 500 pounds, he abandoned art school to pursue his real love: creating verbal portraits as an actor. After joining a roving troupe of thespians, the St. Nicholas Players, he learned Shakespeare and debuted as Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice in 1921. By 1926, he had graduated to the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and, four years later, appeared on the stage of England's grandest of playhouses, London's Old Vic. Ralph had arrived -- on the stage, at least. But another four years passed before he made his first film, The Ghoul, about a dead professor (Boris Karloff) who returns to life to find an Egyptian jewel stolen from his grave. Richardson, portraying cleric Nigel Hartley, is there on the night Karloff returns to unleash mayhem and mischief. From that less-than-auspicious beginning, Richardson went on to roles in more than 70 other films, many of them classics. One of them was director Carol Reed's 1948 film, The Fallen Idol, in which Richardson won the Best Actor Award from the U.S. National Board of Review for his portrayal of a butler suspected of murder. Three years later, he won a British Academy Award for his role in director David Lean's Breaking the Sound Barrier, about the early days of jet flight. In 1962, Richardson won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award for his depiction of James Tyrone Sr., the head of a dysfunctional family in playwright Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Because of Richardson's versatility, major studios often recruited him for demanding supporting roles in lavish productions, such as director Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1954), Otto Preminger's Exodus (1960), David Lean's Dr. Zhivago (1965), and Basil Dearden's Khartoum (1966). While making these films, Richardson continued to perform on the stage -- often varooming to and from the theater on one of his motorbikes -- in such plays as Shakespeare's Henry IV (Part I and II), Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, and Sheridan's School for Scandal. He also undertook a smorgasbord of movie and TV roles that demonstrated his wide-ranging versatility. For example, he played God in Time Bandits (1981), the Chief Rabbit in Watership Down (1978), the crypt keeper in Tales From the Crypt (1972), the caterpillar in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972), Wilkins Micawber in TV's David Copperfield (1970), Simeon in TV's Jesus of Nazareth (1977), and Tarzan's grandfather in Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984). In his spare time, he portrayed Dr. Watson on the radio. Sir Ralph Richardson died in 1983 of a stroke in Marylbone, London, England, leaving behind a rich film legacy and a theater presence that will continue to linger in the memories of his audiences.

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: 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: At age 11 he began appearing in the Australian ballet, and later appeared in stage musicals and toured with Pavlova's dance company. In 1933 he moved to England and joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet; soon he became that company's principal dancer, and in the '40s he choreographed many of its productions. He devoted most of the '50s to acting, appearing with the Old Vic in productions of Shakespeare, then returned to ballet in the '60s; in 1965 he was appointed co-director of the Australian Ballet company. Beginning in the early '40s, he appeared sporadically in films; some of his work involved dancing -- such as The Red Shoes (1948), which he also choreographed -- and some involved straight dramatic roles. He co-directed (with Rudolf Nureyev) and played the title role in the ballet-film Don Quixote (1973). He was knighted in 1950.

Trivia: A gifted musician as well as comic actor, diminutive British performer Dudley Moore made his mark as an American movie star with his hilarious turns as sensitive, bumbling libertines in the hit movies 10 (1979) and Arthur (1981). His stardom, however, had already ebbed before he was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disorder in 1997. Born with a clubfoot and withered leg, Moore endured a series of operations as a child to correct them. He found a refuge from his physical difficulties when he began studying the piano at age six, adding violin and organ to the mix as he got older. After a stint at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Moore attended prestigious Oxford University on an organ scholarship and began composing music for local shows. While at Oxford, Moore met Peter Cook, with whom he teamed up several years after graduation for the popular London musical and comedy revue Beyond the Fringe (1961). After the show's four-year run, Moore and Cook branched out into British TV and movies, including The Wrong Box (1966) and the original version of Bedazzled (1968), featuring Moore as the schlub who makes an absurd Faustian pact with Cook's Satan. Taking a brief break from his comedy partnership, Moore co-wrote, composed the score, and starred in the romantic comedy 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia (1968), opposite his then-wife Suzy Kendall. After spending the mid-'70s performing live in their hit revue Good Evening, Moore and Cook parted for good in 1977 (save for performances in the Amnesty International benefit shows immortalized on film in The Secret Policeman's Ball [1979]) and Moore headed to Hollywood for his first movie role since 1972. Though the part was small, Moore made the most of it with his outrageous performance as a swinging opera conductor in the Hitchcockian comedy Foul Play (1978). A summer hit, Foul Play inspired Blake Edwards to hire Moore to replace George Segal for the lead in 10. A sex comedy about 1970s hedonism, midlife crises, and the male search for female physical perfection, 10 made inept pursuer Moore and voluptuous fantasy girl Bo Derek into stars. After the woeful Biblical spoof Wholly Moses (1980), Moore had his greatest film success with the blockbuster romantic comedy Arthur. Starring Moore as a soused, piano-playing millionaire, Liza Minnelli as his working-class true love, and Sir John Gielgud as his long-suffering butler, Arthur managed to be as funny as it was charming, earning Moore his sole Oscar nomination and a marvelously dry Gielgud his one Oscar win.Following a dramatic performance in the unpopular weepy Six Weeks (1982), Moore returned to the frothy genre that had served him so well. Lovesick (1983), Romantic Comedy (1983), and Moore's remake of the Preston Sturges marital farce Unfaithfully Yours (1984), however, all failed to live up to Arthur's success. Whatever ground Moore regained with Blake Edwards' bigamy romp Micki + Maude (1984) was soon frittered away with Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) and Moore's entrant in the late '80s young/old body-swapping comedies, Like Father, Like Son (1987). The saccharine sequel Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988) failed to recapture the original's sparkle and flopped accordingly. His movie-star status further crippled by box-office duds Crazy People (1990), Blame It on the Bellboy (1992), and The Pickle (1993), Moore returned to TV in the early '90s. Neither of his sitcom vehicles, Dudley (1993) and Daddy's Girls (1994), made it past the first season. Still, through his movie heyday and decline, Moore maintained his parallel career as a musician, appearing as a concert pianist during the 1980s and '90s, as well as masterminding and performing in Showtime's documentary series Orchestra! (1991). The effects of Moore's disease became apparent, though, during a troubled 1996 concert tour in Australia, and he lost the lead in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) when he couldn't remember his lines. Already tabloid fodder when his then-fiancée filed domestic abuse charges in 1994, Moore's fourth marriage dissolved into an ugly divorce in 1997, the same year he was diagnosed with progressive, supranuclear palsy. Increasingly immobilized by the disease, Moore's public appearances became rarer; though not lethal, PSP left Moore susceptible to a fatal bout of pneumonia in March 2002.Moore's four wives also included American actress Tuesday Weld, and he had two sons.

Trivia: After briefly toiling away as an apprentice accountant, Michael Jayston trained for a theatrical career at Britain's Guildhall School. Jayston made his professional debut at age 27 in The Amorous Prawn then made up for lost time by appearing in as many stage, film and TV projects as his schedule would allow. A Shakespearean specialist at such august organizations at the Old Vic and the RSC, he also thrived in contemporary roles, touring extensively in Peter Schaffer's Equus. His film roles include Czar Nicholas II in Nicholas and Alexandria (1971) and Captain Hardy in The Nelson Affair (1971), while numbering among his TV-miniseries credits are the internationally distributed Smiley's People and Tinker, Soldier, Sailor, Spy. In addition, Michael Jayston has starred in two weekly British TV series, playing Colonel Mustard in Cluedo (1991) and Bob in Outside Edge (1994).

Trivia: Born Terence Milligan. A British "army brat," he grew up in India, Burma, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), then moved to England in his mid teens. In 1936 he began his performing career as a singer and trumpeter. He became well known in the '50s on the English radio show Crazy People, which developed into the legendary Goon Show. He wrote much of his own comedy material for the show, and did the same on a number of TV series. He debuted onscreen in 1951, but -- although busy as a screen actor -- never achieved as much success in films as on radio and TV. He co-wrote the play The Bed-Sitting Room and authored several comic novels as well as books of nonsense and verse.

Trivia: British actor Peter Bull made his stage debut in 1933 at age 21, his film debut one year later (The Silent Voice [1934]) and his Broadway bow the next year. He was brought to Hollywood for a small role in Marie Antoinette (1938), which costarred his lifelong friend and fellow Briton Robert Morley. In films, the corpulent Bull was often cast as unpleasant prosecuting attorneys, hard-hearted businessmen or officious government men (including the memorable camera-happy Russian ambassador de Sadasky in Dr. Strangelove [1963]); on stage, he enjoyed a wider variety of roles, and at one time ran his own repertory company. His career was put in abeyance for war service, during which he won the Distinguish Service Cross. Outside of his theatrical work, Bull was well known for his interest in astrology, and even better known for his fascination with teddy bears. He owned perhaps the world's largest and most valuable collection of teddies, and wrote several witty, informative books on the subject (one of his bears appeared prominently in the internationally popular TV serial Brideshead Revisited). Peter Bull died shortly after finishing his role in the movie Yellowbeard (1984), which also represented the last screen work of another prominent British performer, Marty Feldman.

Trivia: Yes, it's true that Welsh actor Hywel Bennett, a bonafide male, made his London stage debut as Ophelia in Hamlet. It's important to note, however, that the production was staged by the Youth Theatre, that it was traditional for men to play female roles in Shakespeare's time, and that, at 15, Bennett's voice hadn't broken yet. Thereafter, he trafficked in "angry young men" parts on stage, and as crafty characters posing as naifs in films. One of his most famous film roles was his first--in 1966's The Family Way, he played the briefly impotent husband of Hayley Mills. He went on to star in the anti-war The Virgin Soldiers (1970) and Percy (1973), in which he played the first recipient of a penis transplant. On British television, Bennett was seen in such weeklies as Where the Buffalo Roams (1967) and Shelley (1985). Incidentally, Hywel Bennett finally got to play the male lead in Hamlet in a 1974 South African production.

Trivia: British lead and supporting actor Ray Brooks began his film career in the early '60s. He has also done a lot of television and stage work.

Trivia: A graduate of Britain's Brighton College, Michael Hordern entered the workaday world as a schoolteacher. Engaging in amateur theatricals in his off-hours, Hordern turned pro in 1937, making his film debut two years later. After serving in the Royal Navy from 1940 to 1945, Hordern returned to show business, matriculating into one of England's most delightful and prolific character actors. His extensive stage work included two Shakespearean roles that may as well have been for him: King Lear and The Tempest's Prospero. In films, Hordern appeared as Marley's Ghost in the 1951 Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol (1951), Demosthenes in Alexander the Great (1956), Cicero in Cleopatra (1963), Baptista in Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew (1967), Thomas Boleyn in Anne of a Thousand Days (1968), and Brownlow in the 1982 TV adaptation of Oliver Twist. Other significant movie credits include the lascivious Senex (he's the one who introduces the song "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid") in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), a pathetic Kim Philby type in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1967), theatre critic George Maxwell (who has his heart cut out by looney actor Vincent Price) in Theatre of Blood (1973), and what many consider his finest film assignment, the dissipated, disillusioned journalist in England Made Me (1983). He also served as offscreen narrator for Barry Lyndon (1976) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). Michael Hordern was knighted in 1983, and a decade later published his autobiography, A World Elsewhere.

Trivia: British comic actor Roy Kinnear received his training at the Theatre Workshop, and made his film debut in 1962's Tiara Tahiti. Short and already balding in his 20s, Kinnear resigned himself early on to character roles; his comic gifts enabled the actor to expand his range as a writer/performer on the fabled early-'60s British TV satirical series That Was the Week That Was. Kinnear became an American favorite for his role as mad scientist Victor Spinetti's harried assistant in the 1965 Beatles film Help!. It was the launching pad of a film career comprised mostly of comic relief and cameo roles. One of Kinnear's most popular film appearances was a two-minute bit specially written for him in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1967), wherein the actor played a trainer of Roman gladiators who conducted his classes in the manner of a golf instructor. Richard Lester, director of both Help! and Forum, cast Kinnear as long-suffering lackey Planchet in the star-studded 1974 filmization of The Three Musketeers, and its sequel (shot simultaneously) The Four Musketeers (1974). With virtually every cast member -- especially Raquel Welch -- clowning it up in the Musketeers films, Kinnear's routines for the first time seemed intrusive. After a decade of variable roles, Kinnear was cast as The Common Man in the 1987 Charlton Heston remake of A Man for All Seasons; it was a brilliant tour de force, with Kinnear displaying a full and versatile range from low comedy to subtle pathos. While recreating his Planchet role in Return of the Musketeers, filmed on location in Spain, Roy Kinnear fell from a horse during a comic chase scene, suffered a heart attack, and died at the age of 54; that film premiered in 1989. Kinnear had completed work on his penultimate feature -- doing one of the voices for the kiddie cartoon The Princess and the Goblin -- not long before his death. It wrapped production in 1992 and took its stateside bow in 1994.

Trivia: "I am not a star and never was. I lack that essential spark." There are precious few filmgoers who would agree with British actor Dennis Price's doleful self-assessment. The son of a military man, the Oxford-educated Price embarked upon an acting career in 1937. After several seasons in John Gielgud's acting company, Price began making films in 1944. He was often cast as handsome scoundrels, notably the charmingly homicidal heir in 1949's Kind Hearts and Coronets. A busy character actor into the 1970s, Price gained a whole new flock of fans for his appearances as Jeeves in the BBC TVer The World of Wooster. He was last seen onscreen as one of Vincent Price's victims in Theatre of Blood (1973).

Trivia: British supporting actor Richard Warwick made his film debut in Romeo and Juliet (1968). He subsequently played a wide variety of roles in films.

Trivia: British lead actor, former juvenile, onscreen from the late '50s.