Trivia: When the film version of the Broadway musical Camelot was released in 1967, critics had a jolly old time lambasting director Joshua Logan for casting non-singers in the leading roles. While it's certainly true that Lynn Redgrave, Richard Harris and Franco Nero seemed to suffer from Tin-Ear Syndrome, the critics were most unfair in picking on the fellow who played Mordred: David Hemmings. The son of a cookie merchant, Hemmings was a successful touring boy soprano at age nine, performing with the English Opera Group. He briefly left the musical world when his voice changed, studying painting at the Epsom School of Art and staging his first exhibition at 15. He returned to singing in his early 20s, first in nightclubs, then on the musical stage. Easing into acting, Hemmings appeared as misunderstood youths and belligerent "Teddy Boys" in a number of British programmers before attaining international stardom as the existential fashion photographer "hero"of Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966). With 1971's Running Scared, the indefatigable Hemmings began yet another new career as director; he has since helmed theatrical and made-for-TV films in England, Australia and Canada. With business partner John Daly, Hemmings formed the Hemdale Corporation for the express purpose of allowing the actor to do pretty much what he pleased both before and behind the cameras. In later years, he added novel writing to his considerable list of accomplishments. David Hemmings was the former husband of American actress Gayle Hunnicutt.

Trivia: Samantha Eggar's father was a British Army brigadier and her mother was of Dutch/Portuguese extraction. Convent educated, Eggar became a stage actress in her teens. While performing in a Shakespeare play, Eggar was discovered by film producer Betty Box, who cast the tall, auburn-haired 23-year-old actress as a sluttish college coed in The Wild and the Willing (1961). Eggar's first international success was The Collector (1965), replacing Natalie Wood (who'd turned down the film) as the harried kidnap victim of obsessive Terence Stamp. Eggar garnered an Oscar nomination for her demanding performance, and also won the Cannes Film Festival award. Then followed a succession of unremarkable roles in films like Walk, Don't Run (1966) and Doctor Doolittle (1967) (which at least gave Eggar a chance to sing). She was better served in The Molly Maguires (1970) and Seven Per Cent Solution (1976), playing the wife of Sherlock Holmes crony Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall) in the latter. Eggar's prolific American TV work has included the role of Anna Leonowens in the expensive, short-lived weekly Anna and the King (1972). Samantha Eggar has managed to maintain her dignity and integrity despite far too many horror flicks like The Brood (1979).

Trivia: He escaped working in the impoverished mining town of his youth when he won scholarships to a Swiss school and Oxford. In 1927 he debuted onstage in both London and New York, and by the early '30s he was among the most well-respected leading men of his day; meanwhile he branched out into playwrighting and direcing. The best known of his plays is The Corn is Green (1938), which won the New York Drama Critics Award as best foreign play in 1941. He authored the autobiographies George (1961) and Emlyn (1973). He debuted onscreen in 1932 and for a decade he was very busy in films; after 1942 his film work was sporadic.

Trivia: As the heroine of the British romantic melodrama Madonna of the Seven Moons (1946), Phyllis Calvert was placed under a gypsy curse which forced her to be wife, mother and mistress all in one. This triumvirate sums up the range of characters played by Ms. Calvert throughout her career. Starting out as a dancer, Phyllis switched to acting after a suffering an injury. Beginning with 1943's The Man in Grey, Phyllis established herself as Britain's favorite "Gothic" heroine, seldom carrying on a romance unless she was dressed in 19th-century fashion, with her long black hair cascading in the wind. Occasional efforts were made to turn Phyllis into a Hollywood star; the best of these was Appointment with Danger (1950), in which she plays a nun who witnesses a murder committed by future Dragnet co-stars Jack Webb and Harry Morgan! Long married to publisher Peter Murray-Hill, Phyllis Calvert cut back on her filmmaking activities in the 1970s, though she starred on the popular BBC TV series Kate (1970-71).

Trivia: A glamorous actress whose beauty and sophistication has only increased as the years pass, London-born screen star Francesca Annis is well known to cinema lovers for her roles in such films as Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971) and David Lynch's Dune (1984). Though she would later become better known to gossip column readers for her May-September romance with actor Ralph Fiennes following an appearance opposite the intense actor in the Broadway version of Hamlet, Annis has continued to impress both on stage and screen thanks to numerous challenging roles.Though a convent education initially steered her toward life as a nun, studies in acting and dance gradually led her into the entertainment industry until she was cast in the lead of the 1958 film The Cat Gang at age 14. The featured child actor in the tale of a group of children who stumble across a smuggling ring while spending long days on the local harbor, Annis made a distinct impression on audiences and was soon advancing in such films as No Kidding (1960) and His and Hers (1961). A role in the 1963 film Cleopatra gained the young starlet international attention, and shortly after the family film Flipper's New Adventure, Annis was cast as Estella in the 1967 U.K. television series Great Expectations. If audiences had not previously recognized her talent by this point, her remarkably powerful performance in Roman Polanski's 1971 feature film Macbeth would be hard to deny. After continuing to gain credit on stage and screen throughout the 1970s, roles in the following decade's Dune, Krull (1983), and Under the Cherry Moon (1986) culminated with an impressive performance as Jacqueline Kennedy in the 1988 made-for-television feature Onassis: The Richest Man in the World.Perhaps her most well-known performance to date due to the romantic scandal that resulted from it, her part in the 1995 Broadway production of Hamlet found both her and co-star Ralph Fiennes abandoning their longtime partners to embark on a heated romance (after playing mother and son Gertrude and Hamlet in the play). Though the scandal caused quite a stir, her memorable (and BAFTA-nominated) performance in 1998's Reckless steered gossip hounds back toward recognizing her remarkable skills as an actress. In 1999 Annis would once again remind the public of her affairs, though, when she appeared opposite Fiennes in the film Onegin, a cinematic adaptation of a 19th century Russian novel. In addition to appearing in such efforts as Deceit (2000) and Copenhagen (2002) in the new millennium, Annis continued her many impressive on-stage performances with an appearance in the West End production of Noël Coward's The Vortex.

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: English character actor John Woodvine could be seen in roles both sizeable and fleeting in several British films of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Woodvine was in the casts of Darling (1965), The Devils (1971), Young Winston (1971), Tales of Beatrix Potter (1975), and An American Werewolf in London (1981) (fourth billed in the role of Dr. Hirsch). American Masterpiece Theatre devotees saw plenty of John Woodvine at the beginning of the 1989-1990 season. The actor was one of the four stars (Joan Plowright, Tom Watt, and Phyllis Logan were the other three) of the miniseries And a Nightingale Sang.

Trivia: British actor Anthony Nicholls made the portraying of distinguished government officials a way of life in his films. Following extensive stage activity, Nicholls began working in movies on a regular basis with 1947's The Laughing Lady. Most American audiences first saw Nicholls in the company of Ronald Reagan, Richard Todd and Patricia Neal in The Hasty Heart (1949). Active in films until the early '70s (including the 1966 Oscar winner A Man For All Seasons), Anthony Nicholls was also seen in the role of W. I. Tremayne, the overseer of three superpowered secret agents on the 1968 British TV adventure series The Champions.

Trivia: Born in South Africa, actress Nan Munro is best remembered for her five-decade career in British theater. She also occasionally appeared in British films.

Trivia: Quintessentially British character actor Donald Sumpter tackled a host of roles in his native Britain before breaking through to international acclaim. He landed guest parts (as different characters) on the U.K. cult fantasy series Doctor Who, then segued to features throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s in such pictures as Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979), Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), and Richard III (1995). Sumpter's popularity increased substantially in the mid- to late 2000s when he landed pivotal supporting roles in two major features: Fernando Meirelles' The Constant Gardener (2005) and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007).

Trivia: Aristocratic German character actor Ferdy Mayne was from his teen years onward a resident of England, where he studied at RADA and Old Vic. Mayne made his professional theatrical bow in 1936, and was first seen on a London stage in 1943. At first billed as "Ferdi Mayne" for his radio and film appearances, he alternated between "Ferdy" and "Ferdinand" in his later works. Of his many film roles, Mayne is best-known for his portrayal of class-conscious vampire Count Von Krolock in Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers (in 1975, he went on tour in a theatrical revival of Dracula). He was also seen as Hungarian producer Alexander Korda in A Man Called Intrepid (1979) and as kidnapped scientist Dr. Laprone in Revenge of the Pink Panther.