Trivia: Considered one of Great Britain's most consistently brilliant players, John Hurt was at his best when playing victims forced to suffer mental, physical, or spiritual anguish. A small man with a slightly sinister countenance and a tenor voice that never completed the transition between early adolescence and manhood, Hurt was generally cast in supporting or leading roles as eccentric characters in offbeat films. The son of a clergyman, Hurt was training to be a painter at St. Martin's School of the Arts when he became enamored with acting and enrolled in London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art instead. He made his theatrical and film debuts in 1962 (The Wild and the Willing). Though he frequently appeared on-stage, Hurt, unlike his many colleagues, was primarily a film and television actor. He gave one of his strongest early performances playing Richard Rich in Fred Zinnemann's A Man for All Seasons (1966). His subsequent work remained high quality through the '70s. On television, Hurt made his name in the telemovie The Naked Civil Servant and furthered his growing reputation as the twisted Caligula on the internationally acclaimed BBC miniseries I, Claudius (1976). He received his first Oscar nomination for playing a supporting role in the harrowing Midnight Express and a second nomination for his sensitive portrayal of the horribly deformed John Merrick -- but for his voice, Hurt was unrecognizable beneath pounds of latex and makeup. In 1984, Hurt was the definitive Winston Smith in Michael Radford's version of Orwell's 1984. Other memorable roles include a man who finds himself hosting a terrifying critter in Alien (1979), his parody of that role in Mel Brooks' Spaceballs (1987), an Irish idiot in The Field (1990), and in Rob Roy (1995).In 1997, Hurt played the lead role of Giles De'ath (pronounced day-ath) for the comedy drama Love and Death on Long Island. The film, which follows a widower (Hurt) who forms an unlikely obsession with a teen heartthrob who lives in Long Island and occasionally stars in low-brow films. Love and Death was praised for its unlikely, yet poignant portrait of unrequited love. The same year, Hurt took on the role of a multi-millionaire willing to fund a scientist's (Jodie Foster) efforts to communicate with alien life in Contact. Hurt took a voice role in the animated series Journey to Watership Down and its sequel, Escape to Watership Down in 1999, and again for The Tigger Story in 2000. In 2001, Hurt joined the cast of Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone to play the small but vital role of wand merchant Mr. Ollivander, and narrated Lars von Trier's experimental drama Dogville. Later, Hurt played an American professor in Hellboy (2004), and won praise for his portrayal of a bounty hunter in The Proposition, a gritty Western from director John Hillcoat. Hurt continued to work in small but meaty supporting roles throughout the next several years, most notably in the drama Beyond the Gates (2005), for which he played a missionary who arrived in Rwanda just before genocide erupted, and as the tyrannical Chancellor Sutler in director James McTiegue's adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel V for Vendetta (2006). In 2010, Hurt reprised his role of Mr. Ollivander for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, and for its sequel in 2011. The actor co-starred with Charlotte Rampling in Melancholia (2011), Lars von Trier's meditation on depression, and played the Head of the British Secret Intelligence Service in the multi-Academy Award nominated spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy the same year. In 2013, Hurt appeared in the futuristic sci-fi movie Snowpiercer and later played the War Doctor in the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who. The following year, Hurt played the King of Thrace in Hercules. Hurt died in 2017, just days after his 77th birthday.

Trivia: The daughter of British actor John Mills and playwright Mary Hayley Bell, Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills made her first screen appearance as an infant in 1947's So Well Remembered. It wasn't until a decade later, however, that Hayley Mills made her formal film debut, portraying the preteen murder witness who is nearly destroyed by her connection to the criminal in 1959's Tiger Bay. Playing many scenes alongside her own father,Mills gave an uncannily affecting performance that won her the British Film Academy's Most Promising Newcomer Award. The movie also brought her to the attention of Walt Disney, ever on the lookout for talented child actors. In 1959, Mills entered Disney's orbit, and the producer placed her into the most meticulous and artistic live-action film in his studio's history up to that time: Pollyanna (1960). The movie transformed Mills from a precociously talented juvenile player into a full-fledged star, and earned her a special Academy Award for her performance. Ironically, Pollyanna was somewhat mis-marketed at the time as a film intended principally for younger girls and their mothers -- in actuality, it is a sentimental film whose dramatic content and visual craftsmanship place it closer in spirit to pictures like The Music Man, or even Shenandoah, perfectly suitable for general audiences; as a result, it was never as big a hit in theaters as it should have been, and Mills' biggest success for Disney turned out to be her next feature, The Parent Trap (1961). This movie, about a set of estranged identical twin sisters who conspire to get their divorced parents back together, gave the 15-year-old actress the chance to play two separate characters, with two distinctly different personalities. She was able to convince a major part of the audience that she was two different people (a gambit later picked up by the creators of The Patty Duke Show), and she also hit the pop music charts with a song from the film, called "Let's Get Together." In the years that followed, Mills' output for Disney proved somewhat uneven, The Moon-Spinners (1964) failing to impress critics, while the more dramatically demanding The Chalk Garden (1964), in which she played an emotionally crippled adolescent, was some of her best work, and reunited her onscreen with her father; and she excelled in the drama Whistle Down the Wind (1962), directed by Bryan Forbes and made for Rank, playing a girl who shelters an escaped criminal, who thinks he's Jesus. The advent of the British Invasion in popular music, which imparted an appeal to all things British in America for about two years, helped sustain Mills' popularity, and her final Disney film, That Darn Cat (1965), was a hit and one of her best comedies, though she was outshone (as she might well have been) by old hands like William Demarest. Her first film after leaving the Disney fold was Gypsy Girl (1966), which marked a break from the American producer's tendency toward light comedy -- directed by her father and written by her mother, it presented Mills in the role of a retarded teenager. She was engaged by John and Roy Boulting to star in The Family Way (1966), a comedy about close-quarter familiar relations (best remembered today because of its score, written by Paul McCartney) -- that picture exploded her lingering goody-two-shoes image by offering Mills in a well-publicized nude scene, and what the scene itself didn't accomplish in changing her image, her romance and marriage to director Roy Boulting, some 33 years her senior, did, and the two had a daughter before their divorce in 1976. Mills would also have a lengthy relationship and eventually a son with actor Leigh Lawson. Curtailing her film appearances in the early '70s, Mills devoted most of her time to television productions; in 1986, she came back to the Disney fold with a Parent Trap TV-movie sequel, and she earned a place in the hearts of a new generation with the title role on 1987's Good Morning, Miss Bliss, the TV precursor to Saved by the Bell. Mills would take a break during the 90's, but returned to TV full force in 2007 with a starring role on the series Wild at Heart.

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: Stylish British comic actor Tony Britton made the transition from stage to screen in 1952. Most of his film appearances were confined to brief, albeit memorable, supporting roles. Where Britton truly thrived was in the world of television, beginning with his six-year (1968-1973) stint on the popular BBC sitcom Father Dear Father. Tony Britton's other series-TV work has included Robin's Nest (the precursor to America's Three's Company), And Mother Makes Five, Don't Wait Up, and Don't Tell Father.

Trivia: Beefy British actor Thorley Walters was appearing in "quota quickies" as early as 1934's First Love. But it was in the '50s that Walters truly came into his own as an irresistably deflatable authority figure in such British comedies as Private's Progress (1955), Carleton Brown of the FO (1958) and Two Way Stretch (1961). Even in cameo roles, Walters made his acting weight effectively felt, as witness Rotten to the Core (1965) and Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1965). Thorley Walters was also a excellent Dr. Watson, essaying the role in the German-made Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) and Gene Wilder's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1977).

Trivia: British stage actress Judy Campbell entered films in 1940, alternating between leads and supporting roles for the next decade. Among her better-known films during this period were Breach of Promise (1941), in which she co-starred with Clive Brook, and Green for Danger (1945) as the secretive Sister Bates. She later specialized in such Grande Dame roles as Countess Vronsky in the 1985 British TV adaptation of Anna Karenina. Judy Campbell is the mother of actress Jane Birkin.

Trivia: Another illustrious graduate of London's Central School of Speech and Drama, Joss Ackland made his first professional stage appearance at 17 in the 1945 production The Hasty Heart. For the next decade, Ackland learned his craft in a variety of regional theatre troupes, taking time out for an unheralded film debut in 1949's Seven Days to Noon. He quit acting in 1955 to manage a Central African tea plantation, finding creative outlets as a playwright and radio disc jockey. Upon his return to the British theatre in 1957, Ackland joined the Old Vic. From 1962 through 1964, he was associate director of the Mermaid Theatre. He subsequently established himself on the West End musical stage, playing such showcase roles as Captain Hook in Peter Pan and Juan Peron in Evita. Launching his film career proper in 1965, Ackland has flourished in characterizations calling for outsized gestures and orotund vocal calisthenics. Among his better-known screen roles are Greta Scacchi's decadent, untrustworthy aristocrat husband in White Mischief (1988), and homicidal South African diplomat Arjen Rudd in Lethal Weapon 2 (1990). On TV, Ackland was seen as C.S. Lewis in the 1985 BBC production of Shadowlands, and as Isaac in the 1994 made-for-cable Biblical drama Jacob. He has also provided voiceovers for the animated features A Midsummer's Night's Dream (1961) and Watership Down (1978). Over the coming decades, Ackland would appear in several projects over the coming decades, including K-19: The Widowmaker, Asylum, and Flawless.

Trivia: British leading and supporting actor Nicholas Pennell found success on stage, screen, and television. As with many British actors, he started out on stage. The Hammer horror film Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1965) was Pennell's film debut. His most notable television role was that of Michael Mont in The Forsythe Saga. Pennell regularly performed at the Stratford Festival after the early '70s.

Trivia: British actor Cyril Luckham appeared in many films during the '50s, '60s, and '70s but he is best known for working in the theater. He got his start in the latter in 1935 and has played in a variety of roles. Luckham has also worked extensively on television.

Trivia: Livepudlian Brian Oulton began his stage career with his home town's rep company. He made his 1939 film bow as a nominal leading man, served five years in the Army, then returned in 1946 as a character actor. Oulton made his mark in beetle-browed, pompous, easily deflatable character roles in films ranging from Last Holiday (1950) to Young Sherlock Holmes (1985); he also showed up as a faffling comic foil in several of the "Carry On" comedy series. Alternating his screen work with his stage activities, Oulton both wrote and acted such revues as Births, Marriages and Deaths (1975), For Entertainment Only (1976). Brian Oulton's radio credits include the role of Cyril on the long-running children's favorite Just William.

Trivia: American character actor Rudy Bond was brought to Hollywood in 1951 to recreated his stage role of Steve in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). He spent the next thirty years hopping back and forth between California and New York for stage and screen assignments, with the occasional TV gig thrown in. Bond played Moose in the Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront (1954); in Twelve Angry Men (1957), Bond had the non-angry part of the Judge in the film's opening sequence; in The Godfather (1972), the actor appeared as Cuneo. Rudy Bond died in Denver, Colorado, where he was appearing in a play.

Trivia: British character actress Margaret Lacey was typically cast as a plain, bespectacled women on stage, screen and television. At one time she was also an assistant for noted magician Jasper Maskelyn.

Trivia: Onscreen from 1948 through the mid-late 1980s, solemn-faced Marianne Stone probably appeared in more films than any other British actress her age. Though she had a few major roles early on, Stone quickly settled into featured parts and bits, often unbilled. She was equally adept at playing lower-class housewives, harpies, officious shop clerks, and ritzy society reporters, and is particularly remembered for her portrayal of Vivian Dankbloom in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962). Stone was married to London show-business columnist Peter Noble.