Trivia: At age 11, Robert Donat began taking elocution lessons to overcome a stutter, going on to develop an exceptional and versatile voice. At 16 he debuted onstage and later played a number of Shakespearean and classical roles in repertory and touring companies; it was almost ten years, however, before he made his London debut. In the early '30s he attracted the attention of filmmakers, and signed a contract with Alexander Korda; almost immediately he was internationally famous for his romantic lead in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), his third film. He made one film in Hollywood but he didn't like the town or the prospect of becoming a conventional movie star. For his starring role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), in which he aged from 25 to 83 onscreen, he won the "Best Actor" Oscar. Although very successful, his career was hampered by chronic asthma and an insecure, self-doubting personality; he turned down many more films than he accepted, and for an actor of his time, his filmography is unusually thin. He appeared in only three films in the '50s, and was seriously ill during the production of his last, requiring oxygen tanks to complete his work. Donat died at 53. He was married to actress Renee Asherson.

Trivia: With her ladylike aura of British gentility, blonde actress Madeleine Carroll was among the first English leading ladies to find a career in Hollywood. Prior to becoming an actress, she worked as a French teacher and hat model, then in 1927 made her London stage debut; she began appearing in British films (at first silents) in 1928, going on to become England's biggest female star. She made 22 films in England, including the two Hitchcock films The 39 Steps, (1935), and Secret Agent (1936) that brought her to Hollywood's attention. She moved there in 1936 to sign a contract with 20th Century-Fox. She became an American citizen in 1943. Following her sister's death during the London blitz of WW II, Carroll largely abandoned films to work in England for war relief. She participated in USO and war-bond drives, and served as a Red Cross volunteer in Italy and France; such work led her to receive France's Legion of Honor and the U.S. Medal of Freedom. Carroll appeared in three more films before retiring, her final film being The Fan (1949). She then went on to work for UNESCO while also occasionally appearing on stage, radio, and TV. Her four husbands included actor Sterling Hayden and French film producer Henri Lavorel.

Trivia: The half-brother of silent film matinee idol Conway Tearle, American actor Godfrey Tearle was raised in England, where he made his stage bow at age 9 in the company of his actor parents. Not as good-looking or charismatic as sibling Conway, Godfrey nonetheless enjoyed a longer and more rewarding career as a character player. Having made his film debut in 1908, Tearle acted in films in both Hollywood and England, seldom getting more than ten minutes' footage but always making a strong impression. He was the ostensibly above-reproach "landed gentry" who turned out to be the head of a spy ring in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1935) and despite his advanced years was given the leading role as a gallant RAF pilot in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1941). One of Sir Godfrey Tearle's best remembered roles was as Franklin D. Roosevelt in MGM's 1946 account of the Manhattan Project, The Beginning of the End. Tearle was a last minute replacement for Lionel Barrymore, whose outspoken anti-FDR stance had prompted Roosevelt's widow Eleanor to refuse Barrymore permission to portray her husband.

Trivia: Educated at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, British actress Peggy Ashcroft made her West End theatrical debut in 1927. Within three years, she achieved fame with her performance of Desdemona opposite African American actor Paul Robeson's Othello. Thereafter, she appeared in the company of London's theatrical elite, most often costarring with Sir John Gielgud. Ashcroft made her film bow in 1933's The Wandering Jew, four years before her first Broadway appearance. In honor of her innumerable Shakespearean performances, Ashcroft was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1956. Appearing very infrequently in films throughout most of her career, Ashcroft is best remembered for her movie roles in Hitchcock's The Thirty Nine Steps (1935) and the Audrey Hepburn vehicle The Nun's Story (1959). In 1984, the 77-year-old actress received the Academy Award for her portrayal of Mrs. Moore in David Lean's A Passage to India. When she did not appear at the Oscar ceremony, rumors began circulating that Ashcroft was terminally ill. In fact, Dame Peggy Ashcroft had six more years' worth of performances in her, culminating with her magnificent portrayal of a lifelong mental institution resident in the made-for-TV She's Been Away (1990).

Trivia: Bantam-weight Scotsman John Laurie abandoned a career in architecture when he first stepped on stage in 1921. Laurie spent most of the next five decades playing surly, snappish types: the taciturn farmer who betrays fugitive Robert Donat in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935), the repugnant Blind Pew in Disney's Treasure Island (1950) et. al. A friend and favorite of Laurence Olivier, Laurie showed up in all three of Olivier's major Shakespearean films. He played Captain Jamie in Henry V (1944), Francisco ("For this relief, much thanks") in Hamlet (1948) and Lord Lovel in Richard III (1955). Intriguingly, Olivier and Laurie portrayed the same historical character in two entirely different films. Both portrayed the Mahdi, scourge of General "Chinese" Gordon: Laurie essayed the part in The Four Feathers (1939), while Olivier played the role in Khartoum (1965). Millions of TV fans worldwide have enjoyed Laurie in the role of Fraser on the BBC sitcom Dad's Army. One of John Laurie's few starring assignments was in the 1935 film Edge of the World, set on the remote Shetland isle of Foula; 40 years later, a frail-looking Laurie was one of the participants in director Michael Powell's "reunion" documentary Return to the Edge of the World (1978).

Trivia: Usually described as "the magnificent Helen Haye ", this regal British actress made her stage debut in 1898. Haye toured with the Frank Benson and Sir Beerbohm Tree repertory companies before making her London bow in 1911 as Gertrude in Hamlet. Her Broadway credits extended from 1925's The Last of Mrs. Cheyney to 1953's Anastasia, in which she beautifully cast as the Dowager Empress. After a brief flirtation with films in 1917, she plunged into moviemaking on a fairly regular basis in 1929. Her most famous screen roles include the socially proper wife of the master villain in Hitchcock's 39 Steps (1935), Countess Vronsky in Anna Karenina (1947), and the Duchess of York in Olivier's Richard III (1956). For many years, Helen Haye taught classes at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; among her prize pupils were John Gielgud and Charles Laughton. Helen Haye should not be confused with American actress Helen Hayes.

Trivia: On stage from 1899, Gus McNaughton began as a juvenile comedian with the Fred Karno company, the legendary British pantomime troupe which also spawned such comic talents as Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. In films from 1930 to 1947, McNaughton's forte was the "fast-talking sidekick." In this capacity, he was memorably cast in several popular George Formby film farces of the 1930s and 1940s. His talents were also put to good use by Alfred Hitchcock in Murder (1930) and The 39 Steps (1935). One of Gus McNaughton's finest screen hours was as P. C. Hargreaves in the wartime comedy A Place of One's Own (1944).

Trivia: Jowly, sharp-nosed British theatrical personality Miles Malleson dabbled in virtually every aspect of the dramatic arts from his 1911 stage debut onward. As a writer (he penned his first play in 1913) he was responsible for the screenplays of such treasured films as Nell Gwyn (1934), Victoria the Great (1937) and Mister Emmanuel (1944). As a producer/director, Malleson staged several notable West End plays, among them the original production of Emlyn Williams' Night Must Fall. And as an actor, Malleson contributed a bottomless reserve of screen characterizations: the childish caliph in Thief of Baghdad (1940) (which he also scripted); the spectral coachman ("Room for one more, sir') in Dead of Night (1946); the cheery hangman in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949); Reverend Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952); and a vast array of family retainers, doddering civil servants, faffling aristocrats, stern judges and rural rustics. Miles Malleson worked into his late 70s, until failing eyesight overtook him.

Trivia: Ivor Barnard was a busy actor for 40 years on stage and screen, with dozens of plays and more than 60 movies to his credit. In England, he was respected enough, and got leading roles right into his sixties, including the part of Mr. Murdoch in the 1948 London production of Brigadoon. If there was a sad element to his career, it was that he had to wait until the final year of his life -- at the age of 66, in the role of would-be assassin Major Ross in John Huston's Beat the Devil -- to finally get noticed by American film critics, who thought him delightful. Barnard was almost too good at what he did, melting into the character roles that were his forte onscreen. Apart from a bit part in a 1920 silent, he confined his work on the stage until the dawn of the sound era. He was very active with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company in the teens, and was established in London by the early '20s. Barnard's movie career began with a small part in Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of John Galsworthy's play The Skin Game. Two years later, he got one of the more prominent movie roles of his career when he played Dr. Falke, the character who sets the story in motion when he is the victim of a practical joke, in William Thiele's screen adaptation of Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. Most of the parts that Barnard portrayed, however, were much smaller, with as little as a single line of dialogue, though he often made them memorable, such as his performance as the sarcastic bystander in the opening scene of Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard's Pygmalion (1938). Asquith thought enough of Barnard to use him in The Importance of Being Earnest 14 years later. Barnard also played small but memorable parts in David Lean's Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. It fell to John Huston to give him the most prominent screen time of his career, however, as the diminutive Ross in Beat the Devil, in which Barnard managed to hold his own in a cast that included Humphrey Bogart, Robert Morley, and Peter Lorre.

Trivia: A bald British supporting actor who played Superintendent Talbot in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936), Matthew Boulton came to Hollywood in 1937 and almost exclusively played English or colonial authority figures, often members of Scotland Yard. Among his best-remembered roles were Inspector Cressney, who trailed jewel thief Clark Gable in They Met in Bombay (1941), and Inspector Graham in The Brighton Strangler (1945). Boulton retired in 1953.

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.