Trivia: As one of several sons of the owner of Toronto's Massey/Harris Agricultural Implement Company, Raymond Massey was expected to distinguish himself in business or politics or both (indeed, one of Raymond's brothers, Vincent Massey, later became Governor General of Canada). But after graduating form Oxford University, Massey defied his family's wishes and became an actor. He made his first stage appearance in a British production of Eugene O'Neill's In the Zone in 1922. By 1930, Massey was firmly established as one of the finest classical actors on the British stage; that same year he came to Broadway to play the title role in Hamlet. In 1931, Massey starred in his first talking picture, The Speckled Band, portraying Sherlock Holmes. One year later, he was co-starred with Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart and Ernst Thesiger in his first Hollywood film, the classic The Old Dark House (1932). Returning to England, Massey continued dividing his time between stage and screen, offering excellent performances in such major motion-picture efforts as The Scarlet Pimpernal (1935) and Things to Come (1936). In 1938, he was cast in his most famous role: Abraham Lincoln, in Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway production Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Massey repeated his Lincoln characterization in the 1940 film version of the Sherwood play, and 22 years later played a cameo as Honest Abe in How the West Was Won (1962). Refusing to allow himself to be pigeonholed as Lincoln, Massey played the controversial abolitionist John Brown in both Santa Fe Trail (1940) and Seven Angry Men (1955), and gave an effectively straight-faced comic performance as mass murderer Jonathan Brewster (a role originally written for Boris Karloff) in Frank Capra's riotous 1941 filmization of Arsenic And Old Lace. Though he would portray a wisecracking AWOL Canadian soldier in 1941's 49th Parallel and a steely-eyed Nazi officer in 1943's Desperate Journey, Massey served valiantly in the Canadian Army in both World Wars. On television, Massey played "Anton the Spymaster", the host of the 1955 syndicated anthology I Spy; and, more memorably, portrayed Dr. Gillespie in the 1960s weekly Dr. Kildare. An inveterate raconteur, Massey wrote two witty autobiographies, When I Was Young and A Thousand Lives (neither of which hinted at his legendary on-set contentiousness). Married three times, Raymond Massey was the father of actors Daniel and Anne Massey.

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: British actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke's physician father was resistant to his son's chosen profession; nonetheless, the elder Hardwicke paid Cedric's way through the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. The actor was fortunate enough to form a lasting friendship with playwright George Bernard Shaw, who felt that Hardwicke was the finest actor in the world (Shaw's other favorites were the Four Marx Brothers). Working in Shavian plays like Heartbreak House, Major Barbara and The Apple Cart throughout most of the 1920s and 1930s in England, Hardwicke proved that he was no one-writer actor with such roles as Captain Andy in the London production of the American musical Show Boat. After making his first film The Dreyfus Case in 1931, Hardwicke worked with distinction in both British and American films, though his earliest attempts at becoming a Broadway favorite were disappointments. Knighted for his acting in 1934, Hardwicke's Hollywood career ran the gamut from prestige items like Wilson (1944), in which he played Henry Cabot Lodge, to low-budget gangster epics like Baby Face Nelson (1957), where he brought a certain degree of tattered dignity to the role of a drunken gangland doctor. As proficient at directing as he was at acting, Hardwicke unfortunately was less successful as a businessman. Always a step away from his creditors, he found himself taking more and more journeyman assignments as he got older. Better things came his way with a successful run in the 1960 Broadway play A Majority of One and several tours with Charles Laughton, Agnes Moorehead and Charles Boyer in the "reader's theatre" staging of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. A talented writer, Hardwicke wrote two autobiographies, the last of these published in 1961 as A Victorian in Orbit. It was here that he wittily but ruefully observed that "God felt sorry for actors, so he gave them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. The price they had to pay was to surrender their talent."

Trivia: Burly British stage actor (and ex-bank clerk) Edward Chapman was brought to films by Alfred Hitchcock, who cast Chapman prominently in Juno and the Paycock (1929), Murder (1930) and The Skin Game (1931). Sci-fi aficionados will remember Chapman for his portrayal of two generations of the Passworthy family in Things to Come (1936) and the pompous Major Grigsby in The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937). Chapman put his career on hold for World War II service with the RAF, then returned to character roles as stern politicians, baleful bank presidents, unfeeling factory owners and the like; he was also a useful starched-shirt aristocrat, vide his performance as the vengeful Queensbury in Oscar Wilde (1960). Edward Chapman's final screen appearance was in 1970's The Man Who Haunted Himself.

Trivia: British actress Margaretta Scott made her first stage appearance at age 17 in 1929; five years later, she launched her lengthy film career. At first merely another of producer Alexander Korda's resident ingénues, she later carved a niche for herself in upper middle-class character roles. An early arrival on television (she was playing Shakespearean roles on the small screen as far back as 1937!), she was a fixture of the BBC historical miniseries of the 1960s and 1970s, notably as Catherine De Medici in the multipart Elizabeth R (1971). Among Margaretta Scott's handful of American film roles was Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez in the 1952 musical farce Where's Charley?

Trivia: Maurice Braddell was a leading British actor during the early 1930s. Later he became an artist and moved to the U.S. where he performed various odd jobs until he began appearing in Warhol films during the late 1960s.

Trivia: A stage actor from the age of seventeen, Derrick DeMarney made his film bow in 1928, at age 21. A handsome and virile leading man in films like Forbidden Music (1936) and Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937), DeMarney seemed to prefer playing against type in such character roles as Disraeli in Victoria the Great (1936) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938). During his wartime service, he directed the government documentary Malta GC (1942). He went on to produce or co-produce a number of films, including the morale-boosting The Gentle Sex (1943) and the noirish thrillers Latin Quarter (1946) and She Shall Have Murder (1950). De Marney's postwar film roles included the vastly different title characters in Uncle Silas (1947) and Meet Slim Callaghan (1952). Derrick DeMarney was the brother of actor Terence De Marney (1909-71).

Trivia: Ann Todd began her stage career in England in 1928 and broke into the movies three years later. After numerous (if somewhat intermittent) screen roles, she became internationally popular for her performance as a vulnerable pianist in The Seventh Veil (1945). From 1949-1957, she was married to director David Lean, who directed several of her films. Todd joined the London's Old Vic theater company in the '50s and appeared in a number of Shakespeare plays. In the mid-'60s, she began a second career as a maker of documentaries, which she wrote, produced, and directed. She published her autobiography, The Eighth Veil, 1980 and died in 1993.

Trivia: One of the most distinguished and prolific actor/managers of the British stage, John Clements was surprisingly less successful in films. Clements' best-known movie role was as heroic coward Lt. Faversham in The Four Feathers (1939), one of several screen appearances under the aegis of producer Alexander Korda. In 1947, he served as writer, producer, and director of Call of the Blood. His last screen showing was a cameo role in Attenborough's Gandhi (1981). In 1968, he was knighted for his theatrical accomplishments. Sir John Clements was the husband of actress Kay Hammond.

Trivia: Burmese actor Abraham Sofaer had the strong semitic features and cultured mannerisms to allow him to play a variety of ethnic types. In various films and TV shows, Sofaer portrayed Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Turks and plenty of East Indians (though he usual shied away from the latter because, in his words, "it is so ridiculously easy"). Offscreen, Sofaer thought of himself as an old-school-tie Englishman. He came to London at age 19 to complete his education, secured a job as stage manager with a Shakespearian company, and went on to a British stage career in 1921 -- making his BBC television debut as early as 1936. One of his most famous portrayals in both England and on Broadway was as Disraeli in the original Helen Hayes production of Victoria Regina. Ensconced in Hollywood by the '50s, Sofaer continued to live the live of an English gentleman, playing cricket in his spare time. He also was a keen scholar of different cultures, especially Hebrew tribal customs. Among Abraham Sofaer's many films were Dreyfus (filmed in Britain in 1931), Elephant Walk (1956), The King of Kings (1961) and Head (1969); certainly Sofaer's most conspicuous film performance was as God Himself in A Matter of Life and Death (1945).

Trivia: A former civil engineer, Charles Carson established himself on the London stage of the 1920s as a superlative Shakespearean actor. In films from 1932, Carson seemed most at home in costume roles, appearing in such historical dramas as Fire Over England (1937), Victoria the Great (1937) and 60 Glorious Years (1939). He also flourished in contemporary roles such as "R" in Hitchcock's Secret Agent (1936), and on at least one occasion leaped some 100 years into the future, as the Great Grandfather in Things to Come (1936). During the war years, he directed at starred in ENSA productions on behalf of the British military troops, then settled into a long second career of playing distinguished elders. Charles Carson made his farewell film appearance in still another historical epic, Lady Caroline Lamb (1972).

Trivia: British actor Patrick Barr went from stage to screen with 1932's The Merry Men of Sherwood. Barr spent the 1930s playing various beneficent authority figures and "reliable friend" types, picking up where he left off in 1946 after six years' military service. In the early 1950s Barr began working in British television, attaining a popularity that had undeservedly eluded him while playing supporting parts in such films as The Frightened Lady (1941) and The Blue Lagoon (1948). This latter-day fame enabled Patrick Barr to insist upon better roles and command a higher salary for his films of the 1950s and 1960s: among the movies in which he appeared during this period were The Dam Busters (1955), Saint Joan (1957), Next to No Time (1960), Billy Liar (1963) and The Great Train Robbery (1978).

Trivia: British actor/playwright Allan Jeayes made his first screen appearance as the cuckolded Sir William Hamilton in the 1918 historical drama Nelson. Jeayes then returned to the stage, where he remained until the talkie era. From 1930 to 1962, with rare exceptions, the actor projected what film historian Leslie Halliwell once described as a "dignified, heavy presence." Allan Jeayes was particularly busy in the films of producer Alexander Korda, playing important roles in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Rembrandt (1936), Elephant Boy (1938), and especially The Four Feathers (1939) and Thief of Baghdad (1940).

Trivia: Throughout much of his screen career, actor George Sanders was the very personification of cynicism, an elegantly dissolute figure whose distinct brand of anomie distinguished dozens of films during a career spanning nearly four decades. Born in St. Petersburg on July 3, 1906, Sanders and his family fled to the U.K. during the Revolution, and he was later educated at Brighton College. After first pursuing a career in the textile industry, Sanders briefly flirted with a South American tobacco venture; when it failed, he returned to Britain with seemingly no other options outside of a stage career. After a series of small theatrical roles, in 1934 he appeared in Noel Coward's Conversation Piece; the performance led to his film debut in 1936's Find the Lady, followed by a starring role in Strange Cargo. After a series of other undistinguished projects, Sanders appeared briefly in William Cameron Menzies' influential science fiction epic Things to Come. In 1937, he traveled to Hollywood, where a small but effective role in Lloyd's of London resulted in a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. A number of lead roles in projects followed, including Love Is News and The Lady Escapes, before Fox and RKO cut a deal to allow him to star as the Leslie Charteris adventurer the Saint in a pair of back-to-back 1939 features, The Saint Strikes Back and The Saint in London. The series remained Sanders' primary focus for the next two years, and in total he starred in five Saint pictures, culminating in 1941's The Saint at Palm Springs. Sandwiched in between were a variety of other projects, including performances in a pair of 1940 Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Foreign Correspondent and the Best Picture Oscar-winner Rebecca.After co-starring with Ingrid Bergman in 1941's Rage in Heaven, Sanders began work on another adventure series, playing a suave investigator dubbed the Falcon; after debuting the character in The Gay Falcon, he starred in three more entries -- A Date With the Falcon, The Falcon Takes Over, and The Falcon's Brother -- before turning over the role to his real-life brother, Tom Conway. Through his work in Julien Duvivier's Tales of Manhattan, Sanders began to earn notice as a more serious actor, and his lead performance in a 1943 adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Moon and Sixpence established him among the Hollywood elite. He then appeared as an evil privateer in the Tyrone Power swashbuckler The Black Swan, followed by Jean Renoir's This Land Is Mine. A pair of excellent John Brahm thrillers, 1944's The Lodger and 1945's Hangover Square, helped bring Sanders' contract with Fox to its close.With his portrayal of the world-weary Lord Henry Wooten in 1945's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Sanders essayed the first of the rakish, cynical performances which would typify the balance of his career; while occasionally playing more sympathetic roles in pictures like The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, he was primarily cast as a malcontent, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his venomous turn in 1951's All About Eve. The award brought Sanders such high-profile projects as 1951's I Can Get It for You Wholesale, 1952's Ivanhoe, and Roberto Rossellini's 1953 effort Viaggio in Italia. However, his star waned, and the musical Call Me Madam, opposite Ethel Merman, was his last major performance. A series of historical pieces followed, and late in the decade he hosted a television series, The George Sanders Mystery Theater. In 1960, he also published an autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad.Sanders spent virtually all of the 1960s appearing in little-seen, low-budget foreign productions. Exceptions to the rule included the 1962 Disney adventure In Search of the Castaways, the 1964 Blake Edwards Pink Panther comedy A Shot in the Dark, and 1967's animated Disney fable The Jungle Book, in which he voiced the character of Shere Khan the Tiger. After appearing on Broadway in the title role of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Sanders appeared in John Huston's 1970 thriller The Kremlin Letter, an indication of a career upswing; however, the only offers which came his way were low-rent horror pictures like 1972's Doomwatch and 1973's Psychomania. Prior to the release of the latter, Sanders killed himself on August 25, 1972, by overdosing on sleeping pills while staying in a Costa Brava hotel; his suicide note read, "Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored." He was 66 years old.

Trivia: Born in South Africa and raised in Australia.At the age of 21, moved to Melbourne to pursue an acting career.Started his own acting school Paul O'Brien Acting in Australia.Is a skilled Chef.Is skilled at surfing.Is skilled at guitar.Has endorsed the Starlight Children's Foundation in Australia, providing innovative programs to give fun and joy to seriously ill children in hospitals.

Trivia: Usually billed as Anthony Holles, this prolific British character actor made his first movie appearance in 1921. Holles' more sizeable film roles of the 1930s included "Bonzo" in Star Reporter (1932), and a female-impersonator turn in Hotel Splendide (1932). The war years found Holles playing working-class types like Roy Todd in Thursday's Child (1943) and Sgt. Bassett in A Canterbury Tale (1946). Otherwise, Antony Holles was seen in fleeting, functional roles, most of which didn't even have character names: in his last film, The Rocking Horse Winner (1950), Holles is identified only as "Bowler Hat."