Trivia: Slim, ladylike British actress Dana Wynter spent most of her childhood in Rhodesia, where she attended Rhodes University as a pre-med student. An amateur preoccupation with theater led to a lifelong professional commitment; she made her first stage appearances before she turned 20, and her first film, White Corridors (1951), at 21. From 1955 through 1960 Wynter was under contract to 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood. Usually called upon merely to exhibit cool-headed British reserve, she was given an excellent opportunity to display hysteria and near-lunacy in 1958's In Love and War. In films until the late '80s, Dana Wynter has also done a great deal of television; in 1966, she co-starred with Robert Lansing on the British-filmed espionage series The Man Who Never Was, and was cast (superbly) as Queen Elizabeth in the 1982 TV movie The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana.

Trivia: Ex-Merchant Marine seaman Laurence Naismith made his London stage bow in the chorus of the 1927 musical production Oh, Boy. Naismith joined the Bristol Repertory at age 22, remaining with the troupe until joining the royal artillery at the outbreak of World War II; he spent nine years in military service, emerging with the rank of Acting Battery Commander. His officer's bearing served Naismith well in such authoritative film assignments as the ill-fated Captain Smith in A Night to Remember (1958). Other highlights in Naismith's lengthy movie career include the roles of the Prince of Wales in The Trial of Oscar Wilde (1960), Argus in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Merlin in Camelot (1967). A frequent visitor to Broadway, Naismith played Kris Kringle in Here's Love, Meredith Willson's 1963 musical adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street. Among Laurence Naismith's hundreds of television credits was the recurring role of Judge Fulton on the 1971 Tony Curtis-Roger Moore adventure series The Persuaders.

Trivia: British character actor, onscreen from 1955.

Trivia: The son of prominent stage actor Malcolm Keen, London-born Geoffrey Keen proved his talent in his own right when he won the Gold Medal at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. On stage from 1932 and in films from 1946, Keen established himself as one of the premiere purveyors of cold-edged corporate types. If a producer wanted a dryly sarcastic executive or intimidating attorney, Keen was the man. In this vein, Geoffrey Keen was the ideal replacement for the late Bernard Lee as "M" in the James Bond films, essaying the role in such Bond escapades as The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), A View to a Kill (1985) and The Living Daylights (1987).

Trivia: Though born in Czechoslovakia, actor Karel Stepanek was generally regarded as a German actor due to his extensive film work in Germany (as Karl Stepanek) in the years before World War II. Stepanek fled to England in 1940, where, like many European refugee actors, he specialized in portraying Teutonic villains. He tried to stay away from out-and-out Nazi roles, but his predilection for wearing black uniforms and barking out guttural commands left little doubt as to the political preferences of Stepanek's screen characters. One of his most typical characterizations could be found in the 1946 POW drama, The Captive Heart; Stepanek also registered well as a friendlier foreigner in The Fallen Idol (1949). Commuting between London and Hollywood, Karel Stepanek continued to fight World War II, usually on the wrong side, into such '60s films as Sink the Bismarck! (1960), I Aim at the Stars (1960) and Operation Crossbow (1965).

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: A former engineer, British actor Maurice Denham first appeared on-stage in 1934, making his London bow two years later. During his five years' wartime service, Denham built up a "man of a thousand voices" reputation on such radio series as the ITMA Show and Much-Binding-in-the-Mash. He made his first film appearance in 1947. While garnering excellent press for his stage portrayals of Macbeth and Uncle Vanya, he was usually seen in lesser roles in films, playing dozens of clergymen, detectives, politicians, prison governors, and military officers. He was also a regular on the 1971 TV series The Lotus Eaters. Maurice Denham's crowning film achievement was one in which his face was never seen: In the 1955 animated feature Animal Farm, Denham provided the voices of all the animals.

Trivia: The son of a British vicar, Michael Goodliffe began his acting career at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. His theatrical activities were put on hold during WWII, when he served five years as a POW. Picking up where he left off in 1948, he entered films with The Small Back Room, then spent the next three decades playing a vast array of military officers, diplomats, and businessmen. His costume roles included Robert Walpole in Disney's Rob Roy (1953), Count de Dunois in Quentin Durward (1954), and Charles Gill in The Trial of Oscar Wilde (1960). Though never a star in films, he enjoyed leading man status on British television, notably in the TV series Sam (1973-1975). Michael Goodliffe was 62 when he committed suicide by jumping from a hospital window.

Trivia: Active the London theatrical circles from 1925, British actor Esmond Knight first set foot on a movie sound stage with 1931's The Ringer. His career momentum was almost permanently interrupted in 1941, when, while serving with the Royal Navy, he was temporarily blinded in battle. He regained enough of his sight to resume his filmmaking activities in 1943, appearing in such productions as Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (1944), Black Narcissus (1946) and The Red Shoes (1947), Olivier's Henry V (1945) and Richard III (1955), and Jean Renoir's The River (1951). In 1960, Knight co-starred in Sink the Bismarck (1960), a reenactment of the naval battle in which he'd been blinded 19 years earlier. Long married to actress Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight died in Egypt while filming The Balkan Trilogy.

Trivia: Baby-faced British character actor Jack Watling was trained at the Italia Conti school. On stage from age 12, Watling made his earliest appearances in such Christmas pantomimes as Where the Rainbow Ends. In 1938, he was cast in his first film, Sixty Glorious Years. Entering his teen years, Watling worked in Donald Wolfit's repertory company, then was cast in his favorite stage role, that of Flight Lieutenant Graham in the 1942 West End production Flare Path. Following three years' service in the RAF, he played his most celebrated role, cashiered naval cadet Dickie Winslow in The Winslow Boy, which he would repeat for the 1950 screen version. Among his choicer screen assignments of the 1950s was the wastrely Marquis of Rutleigh in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin. In the 1970s, Jack Watling was a semi-regular in the British TV series Father, Dear Father.

Trivia: The brother of actor/director Basil Dignam, Mark Dignam studied journalism before making his 1930 stage bow in Lonely House. After a few seasons with the Ben Greet repertory troupe, he made his London debut in 1932 and thereafter worked with such organizations as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. In films from 1949, Dignam specialized in roles calling for gray-maned authority, notably the Laird in The Maggie (1954), the prosecuting attorney in Carrington, V.C. (1955), and Merlin in Cornel Wilde's Sword of Lancelot (1962). Mark Dignam reluctantly earned a bit of notoriety in 1969 when he appeared as Polonius in Nicol Williamson's controversial film version of Hamlet.

Trivia: A one-time newspaper reporter, British actor Ernest Clark gave up the Fourth Estate when he joined a provincial repertory company. His London stage debut occurred in 1939, while he first appeared in films with 1949's Private Angelo. Clark generally appeared in small parts as narrow-minded clerks or heartless officials: his more popular films include The Dam Busters (1955), A Tale of Two Cities (1957), Sink the Bismarck (1960), Arabesque (1966) and Gandhi (1982). Ernest Clark achieved some American fame in the early '70s with his role as humorless anatomy professor Loftus on the British comedy series Doctor in the House.

Trivia: British character actor John Horsley launched his film career in 1948. Horsley started out by playing a plethora of policemen, then specialized in portraying doctors, barristers and business executives. His characters were nearly always bespectacled, all the better for his trademarked baleful stares. One of his smallest parts was in one of his biggest films: 1959's Ben-Hur. PBS devotees will recognize John Horsley as Doc Morrisey in the British sitcom The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin (1975).

Trivia: Seemingly born in a tuxedo, British actor John Stuart began his stage and screen career directly after World War I service in The Black Watch. Stuart was a very popular leading man in British silent films, though it's hard to gauge that popularity since many of his best films of the '20s -- A Sporting Double (1923), Constant Hot Water (1924), Tower of London (1926) -- are either inaccessible or nonexistent. Remaining popular after his talkie debut in Kitty (1929), Stuart matured into character parts, spending much of World War II playing government officials and police inspectors. After showing up in the company of virtually the entire British film industry in 1951's The Magic Box, Stuart settled into bits and cameo roles in such films of the '50s and '60s as Your Past is Showing (1958), Blood of the Vampire (1958) and Sink the Bismarck (1960). One of his last appearances was a tiny role in Superman: The Movie (1978). An accomplished writer, John Stuart penned his autobiography, Caught in the Act, in 1971.

Trivia: Walter Hudd was one of the busier actors of his generation, across a 40-year career that carried him from touring the British provinces to work in international films. Born in London at the end of the 19th century, he began his professional performing career in the teens, making his debut in the play The Manxman in 1919. He toured as a member of the Fred Terry Company, and made his London debut in the 1920s. Hudd first came to serious critical attention with his portrayal of Guildenstern in a 1925 modern-dress production of Hamlet, and he later became a theatrical star in the play Too Good To Be True, in the role of Private Meek, a character modeled after T.E. Lawrence; as surviving photos from the production reveal, in costume he was a near dead-ringer for the real-life Lawrence. Hudd also directed on the stage during the 1930s and 1940s, including several Shakespearean plays presented at Stratford-on-Avon. In movies, Hudd was usually cast in supporting and character roles, initially as part of the stable of actors associated with Alexander Korda's London Films, in movies like I Stand Condemned and Rembrandt. In 1937, however, he got a rare chance to play a lead onscreen, as Petersen in Elephant Boy, an unusual documentary-drama co-directed by Robert Flaherty and Zoltan Korda, which is best remembered today for having introduced the boy actor Sabu to the world. Hudd devoted a great deal of effort to bringing theatrical entertainment to the factory workers and more remote villages of England during World War II, though he still managed to play roles in Major Barbara and I Know Where I'm Going, among a handful of major movies. After the war, his film parts multiplied, and he was very busy on the screen during the 1950s, in productions as different as Anthony Asquith's The Importance of Being Earnest and Tony Richardson's Look Back in Anger, and playing every kind of character role from coroners (in Cast a Dark Shadow) to British admirals (in Sink the Bismarck!) and German intelligence chiefs (in The Two-Headed Spy). Had he lived longer, Hudd would almost certainly have become a fixture of British television -- he had done one very, very early episode of The Avengers -- but his death in early 1963, at age 65, cut short a promising Indian summer to his career.

Trivia: A handy man to have around in a crime film, British actor Sydney Tafler specialized in tough gang-member and tipster types in the '50s. On stage from 1936 and in films from 1942 (The Young Mr. Pitt), Tafler's busiest screen years were 1949 through 1960, when virtually every other British film took place at night on a seedy, rainswept side street. The actor smoked cigarettes and talked from the side of his mouth through in such films as Passport to Pimlico (1949), Mystery Junction (1951) and The Saint's Girl Friday (1954), enjoying the occasional larger, subtler role in films like Carve Her Name with Pride (1955). In 1969 Tafler was still menacing any and all by saying nary a word in the filmization of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (1969). Sydney Tafler's final film role was in a captain's uniform (could it have been a disguise to elude the coppers?) in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

Trivia: A heavy cigarette smoker who died of lung cancer, he grew up in a Quaker family in which smoking was prohibited. Originally hired by CBS in 1935 not as a journalist, but as Director of Talks and Education, a job that involved developing cultural and discussion shows. Assembled a team of reporters, known as "Murrow's Boys," to offer firsthand accounts of the events in Europe during World War II. Began using the phrase "Good night and good luck" shortly after a 14-year-old Princess Elizabeth closed an October 1940 broadcast to British children by saying: "Good night and good luck to you all." Delivered a scathing 1954 report on Sen. Joseph McCarthy on his TV show See It Now that is widely credited with changing public opinion on the controversial senator. Appointed head of the United States Information Agency by John F. Kennedy in 1961. Was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and an honorary knighthood by the British government in 1965.

Trivia: British character actor Jack Gwillim first appeared onscreen in the '50s.

Trivia: While his name and his participation in British films would suggest some relationship to popular British comedienne Betty Balfour, actor Michael Balfour was actually from the United States, no relation to his more popular namesake. Like Ben Welden and Bernard Nedell before him, Balfour was cast as a "typical" American gangster or tough guy in most of his films -- notably his first, the notorious No Orchids For Miss Blandish (1948). The actor's busiest period was 1950-1960, when he showed up in such films as Obsession (1956) and The Steel Key (1958). Balfour was also a regular on the London-filmed TV detective drama Mark Saber, playing Saber's assistant Barney O'Keefe. The name Michael Balfour might ring a bell with fans of 1950s horror films; he played the unfortunate Sgt. Kasper, whose brains are sucked out by the "Fiend Without a Face" in the 1958 chiller of the same name.

Trivia: Richard Beale is a British character actor who has appeared on stage, screen, and television throughout Europe. During WW II, Beale served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

Trivia: Forceful character actor Edward Judd was born to English parents in the port city of Shanghai. Beginning his career in the Orient, Judd rose to modest fame on the British stage. He made his first starring film appearance in the 1948 culture-clash drama The Guinea Pig (aka The Small Voice). Judd's subsequent film roles found him playing against his somewhat brutish fame and brooding personality with wit and perspicacity. He worked frequently in science fiction films, notably X the Unknown (1957), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) and First Men in the Moon (1964). To date, Judd's last film was 1987's The Kitchen Toto, still another culture-clash effort, this one filmed in Kenya. On television, Edward Judd was a regular on the British sci-fi series 1990.