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Lancashire-born Warren Clarke was an actor of immense presence and considerable versatility who turned his wide-shouldered, robust appearance and lived-in, hangdog facial features into an asset. For more than two and a half decades he had toiled in a wide variety of supporting roles before finding international success as the often crude, irascible, heavy-drinking Superintendant Andy Dalziel in TV's Dalziel and Pascoe (1996). When the series began, Clarke had summed up Dalziel as 'a beer-swilling chauvinist pig', but the character evolved and became more complex and endearing (in a curmudgeonly sort of way) over the show's eleven-year duration. There were also commonalities between the actor and his creation: impatience, a reputation for not tolerating fools gladly; a humorous, irreverent nature and a shared dislike for political correctness. In private life, Clarke was passionate about football (a lifelong Manchester City supporter) and golf.

The son of a hard-working stained glass maker, Clarke developed his love for the performing arts while in his teens. A frequent visitor to the cinema for Saturday morning and matinée screenings ("Flash Gordon" seemed to have been a particular favourite), he was actively encouraged by his parents to follow his chosen vocation. He performed in amateur theatrics, meanwhile earning his money as a copy boy, running errands for the Manchester Evening News, then working in a fruit and vegetable market before securing his first acting gig with Huddersfield Rep at the age of eighteen. Clarke once recalled his first performance, as an elderly German academic, which was marred by a make-up malfunction when the self-raising flour he had put in his hair to make it appear white mixed with perspiration, turned to dough and ran down his face. He would eventually master the stage (enacting, among other parts, Caligula in John Mortimer's 1972 adaptation of "I, Claudius" and Winston Churchill in "Three Days in May" at the West End, a performance the reviewer of The Guardian described as "utterly persuasive").

From the late 1960's, Clarke found more or less regular television work, at first with Granada in series like The Avengers (1961) and Callan (1967). For years he remained a struggling actor, earning barely enough to make ends meet. He performed on stage at the Royal Court in London, and, to improve his situation, earned a second income as a van driver. He finally attracted attention on the big screen as a violent, bowler-hatted thug in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971). The turning point in Clarke's career was his role as a pig-headed manager of an engineering firm involved in a chalk-and-cheese relationship with a liberal-minded academic in Nice Work (1989). In the years between, his expressive features graced a succession of diverse leading and supporting parts in both comedy and drama: Churchill in ITV's Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (1974); Quasimodo in the 1976 television version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"; a mutinous Roman soldier in the epic miniseries Masada (1981); a surly East German STASI officer in the uproarious parody Top Secret! (1984); a pig-fixated Regency period industrialist in Blackadder the Third (1987); stalwart, bewhiskered Lawrence Boythorne in BBC's outstanding production of Bleak House (2005); "pathetically nice" market gardener Brian Addis in the first two seasons of Down to Earth (2000). Clarke's guest appearances were prolific: from Elsie Tanner's nephew in Coronation Street (1960) to a querulous diabetic patient in Call the Midwife (2012).

Always a welcome presence in period drama, he had been cast in Poldark (2015), a remake of the popular 1975 miniseries, based on the novels by Winston Graham. Filming had already begun in Bristol and Cornwall when Clarke died in his sleep at the age of 67.

Born in Palestine before the inception of the Israeli state in the city of Haifa, she first distinguished herself by winning one of the first beauty contests in the nascent Israel. Haya Harareet (also spelled Hararit) made her debut in Thorold Dickinson's film Hill 24 Doesn't Answer (1955) ("Hill 24 Doesn't Answer"). The landmark Israeli film, mostly in English, is also the first feature-length production to be shot and processed entirely in Israel, and made for international distribution. The film was an official selection at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival and Harareet won an award for her role in the film. She plays Miriam Mizrahi, a fourth generation, dark-eyed and beautiful Sabra, working for the underground.

Best-known for her role as Esther, opposite Charlton Heston in William Wyler's film classic Ben-Hur (1959), she also played in Francesco Maselli's The Doll That Took the Town (1957) ("The Doll that Took the Town") with Virna Lisi, _Edgar G. Ulmer''s Journey Beneath the Desert (1961) ("Journey Beneath The Desert", AKA "The Lost Kingdom")with Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Basil Dearden's The Secret Partner (1961) with Stewart Granger. She cowrote the screenplay for Our Mother's House (1967) which starred Dirk Bogarde.

Ms. Harareet was also credited as a presenter for 'Best Special Effects' at the 32nd Annual Academy Awards in 1960.

She was married to the British film director Jack Clayton until his death in 1995.

Sir John Gielgud enjoyed a theatrical career that spanned 64 years, from a role in a 1924 London production of "The Constant Nymph" to the 1988 production of " Sir Sydney Cockerell: The Best of Friends", and a film career which began in 1924 and ended not long before his death. He played his first Hamlet in London in 1929, and was hailed by many as the Hamlet of his generation (and in hindsight, of the century). In 1965, his Shakespearean colloquy "The Ages of Man" won him a Tony on Broadway. The great actor, at his best in classical roles, even won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar uncharacteristically playing a butler in the comedy hit Arthur (1981).

He was born Arthur John Gielgud on April 14, 1904, in South Kensington, London, to Franciszek Henryk (later Frank Henry) Gielgud, a stockbroker, and his wife, Kate Terry. His father was of Polish ancestry, with distant Lithuanian roots, while his mother was English and from an acting family. His paternal great-grandmother, Aniela (nee Wasinskiej) Aszperger, had been a Shakespearean actress in Poland, and his maternal grandmother, Kate Terry, had played Cordelia at the age of 14. Also on his mother's side, his great-uncle Fred Terry became a stage star acting the role of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Fred's sister, Ellen Terry, the great stage actress who made her fame as Henry Irving's leading lady, was his great-aunt. (Gielgud's brother, Val Gielgud, became the head of BBC Radio in the 1950s).

Arthur John Gielgud attended Hillside prep school, where he had his first stage experience as Shakespeare's Shylock and as Humpty Dumpty, before moving on to the Westminster school in London. He often played hooky from school to attend performances of the Diaghilev Ballet. He was 17 years old when he made his debut as a professional actor at the Old Vic in 1921, playing a French herald in "Henry V." The next year, his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry hired him as an assistant stage manager and understudy for "The Wheel". While pursuing his stage career, he studied acting at Lady Benson's Dramatic Academy before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) for a year. He appeared in his first motion picture in 1923 in the silent picture Who Is the Man? (1924).

Gielgud's first major role on the London stage was as Trofimov in Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard." In 1924, he understudied Noel Coward in "The Vortex" and "The Constant Nymph," parts he subsequently took over. During the run of "The Constant Nymph", Gielgud met the actor John Perry, who had a walk-on role in Avery Hopwood's "The Golddiggers", starring Tallulah Bankhead. Gielgud and Perry fell in love, and Perry abandoned his unpromising stage career to live with Gielgud in his flat in Covent Garden. Subsequently, Gielgud joined J. B. Fagan's company that played in Oxford and in the West End, as London's commercial theater district was called.

In 1929, Lilian Baylis invited him to join the Old Vic, and he played all the major parts in repertory over the next two seasons, establishing his reputation as a great actor. It was in 1929-30 season that Gielgud first played the title role in William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", which made theatrical history as it was the first time an English actor under 40 had played the part in the West End. Blessed with what Laurence Olivier called "The Voice that Wooed the World", Gielgud revolutionized the role with the speed of his delivery. Developing his interpretation of Hamlet in subsequent performance over the years, he would generally be accorded the greatest Hamlet of his generation and of the 20th century, his facility with the part rivaled only on stage by John Barrymore . But it was his 1929-30 Hamlet and his performance in the title role of Shakespeare's "Richard II", another role he made his own, that earned him the reputation as the premier Shakespearean actor in England.

Inspired by Gielgud's performances, a woman wrote, under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot, the play "Richard of Bordeaux" specifically for him, and he starred in and directed the play. "Richard of Bordeaux" was a box-office smash and made him a celebrity. This huge financial success of the play meant that Gielgud could stage classics in the West End. An innovator, Gielgud pioneered the theater company system. He also encouraged a new generation of actors, including Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans, Glen Byam Shaw, Anthony Quayle, George Devine, and Alec Guinness, who reportedly saw him in "Richard of Bordeaux" fifteen times. After World War II, Gielgud proved a mentor to a young de-mobilized R.A.F. enlisted man, Richard Jenkins, who became a star overnight in Gielgud's production of "The Lady's Not for Burning" as Richard Burton. The two remained friends for all of Burton's life, Gielgud directing Burton in his memorable 1964 New York production of "Hamlet".

Gielgud was a notorious workaholic and single-mindedly focused on his craft. Beverley Nichols related how Gielgud returned from a village in late 1939, loaded down with newspapers and a worried look. Asked whether war had finally been declared with Germany, Gielgud replied: "'Oh, I don't know anything about that, but 'Gladys Cooper' has got the most terrible reviews."

Represented by the theatrical agency H. M. Tennent, whose managing director was the famous Hugh 'Binkie' Beaumont, Gielgud lost the romantic affections of John Perry to Beaumont (they were a committed couple until Beaumont's death). During World War II, acting without Gielgud's knowledge, Beaumont obtained an exemption from military service for Gielgud, who expected to be called up, but had to content himself with being a London fire watch warden. In the post-war theater, Gielgud abandoned the romantic roles that made him a box-office star in favor of character work. He was influenced in that direction by the 25-year-old Peter Brook, who directed him in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure." (The other great Peter, Peter Hall, who founded the Royal Shakespeare Company, and later succeeded Laurence Olivier as director of the National Theatre, directed Gielgud as Prospero in "The Tempest" in 1973, the first production he directed for the NT on the South Bank.)

He became Sir John Gielgud when he was awarded a knighthood in the Coronation Honours list of June 1953. By this time, he had begun a long-term relationship with Paul Anstee. On October 21, 1953, Gielgud was arrested in Chelsea for soliciting a homosexual act in a public lavatory. Arraigned the next morning, he pleaded guilty, apologized to the court, and was fined ten pounds sterling. He had identified himself to the police as "Arthur Gielgud, 49, a clerk, of Cowley Street Westminster." Homosexuality was proscribed by the law in the UK, and Gielgud gave his less common birth name and a phony job description in the hopes that the press would not get wind of his pinch. The police made an attempt to prevent the press from learning of the incident, but in "Evening Standard" journalist was in the court that morning, and for the early afternoon edition, the paper came out with a headline "Sir John Gielgud fined: See your doctor the moment you leave here."

Publicly humiliated, Gielgud worried about how the West End audience would react the next time he appeared on stage. Gielgud was advised not to seek work in the United States for at least four years as he likely would be being refused entry by American immigration authorities. In a letter to Lillian Gish at the time (not revealed until after his death), Gielgud told her that he perhaps should have committed suicide. While Binkie Beaumont initially favored keeping Gielgud off the boards, Gielgud's brother Val, then head of BBC Radio, threatened the homosexual Beaumont with exposure if he kept his brother away from acting. A conference of his friends was called by Beaumont to determine how to best handle the crisis as Gielgud was scheduled to open in N. C. Hunter's play "A Day at the Sea" in the West End, which he was also directing. The "war council" included Laurence Olivier, his wife Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson, and Glen Byam Shaw, who was running the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-Upon-Avon. Only Olivier counseled him to postpone the play; the rest urged him to carry on. Gielgud heeded the advice of the majority, and went ahead with the production. Upon entering the stage the first night, the house was brought down by a standing ovation.

Outside the theater, the press whipped up a public backlash over the "homosexual menace." There were fears among the theater's gay community that there would be a police crackdown, leading choreographer Frederick Ashton to say of Gielgud, "He's ruined it for us all." So afraid was his lover Paul Anstee, that he burned all his letters. Gielgud's official biographer, Sheridan Morley, who withheld publication of his authorized biography until after Gielgud's death so as not to broach the subject of the arrest and Gielgud's sexuality during his lifetime, believes that the Gielgud arrest and brouhaha in the press likely were part of an organized campaign against homosexuality that had been festering in Britain since just before World War II.

By the mid-1950s, the traditional English stage was stagnating, as susceptible to an insurrection as the theater had been in the 1930s, when Gielgud's acting and direction had overthrown the old order. Gielgud's 1955 go at Shakespeare's "King Lear" was a failure, and his style of acting went out of fashion after the kitchen-sink theatrical revolution heralded by the Royal Court's May 1956 staging of John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger". Unlike Olivier, who reinvented himself with his characterization of Archie Rice in Osborne's The Entertainer (directed by kitchen-sink stalwart Tony Richardson), an era of rebellion against the cultural Establishment was at hand, which rendered the current lions of the stage passé. It was a new world in which Gielgud felt he had no place.

Gielgud stuck to what he knew. He created a solo recital of Shakespearean excerpts called "The Ages of Man" for the 1957 Edinburgh Festival. The recital proved extremely popular, and he toured with the show for a decade, winning a special Tony Award in 1958 for his staging of the show on Broadway. In the 1960s, he had a notable failure with his "Othello," and he was not a success in Peter Brook's 1968 staging of "Oedipus", two roles that Olivier had excelled in. Laurence Olivier, once his acolyte, was by this time considered the greatest actor in the English language, if not the world. He would become the first actor ennobled when he became Lord Olivier of Brighton in 1970. Gielgud, in contrast, had seemed, like their contemporary Ralph Richardson, to be old-fashioned and behind the times.

He was nominated for a Tony as Julian in Edward Albee's willfully obscure "Tiny Alice" in 1965, but Gielgud did not truly begin to transform himself into a contemporary actor until his appearances in Tony Richardson's 1967 film The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and in Alan Bennett's 1968 play "40 Years On...." He continued to revitalize his reputation in 1970, when he appeared in David Storey's "Home," and in 1976, when he appeared in Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land." Along with his reclaimed reputation came an appointment as a Companion of Honour in 1977. His career renaissance was ratified by the winning of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Arthur (1981) in 1981.

Although he had appeared in approximately 80 films, his supercilious character did not make him a popular movie actor, or a particularly distinguished one, aside from his brilliant turn as Cassius in the film adaptation of Julius Caesar (1953) and his gem of a cameo as Clarence in Olivier's Richard III (1955). His genius remained reserved for the stage. (He had even turned down a film offer in the mid-1930s from Alexander Korda to film his great Hamlet.) As The Times eulogized after his death, "To a unique degree his greatest performances coincided with the greatest plays."

John Gielgud met his last love, Martin Hensler, at an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in the 1960s. They kept in touch, and Hensler moved in with Gielgud six years later. They remained a couple for over 30 years until Gielgud's death. Despite the publicity surrounding his 1953 arrest and the legalization of homosexuality in the UK in 1967, Gielgud did not talk publicly about his sexuality, so most of the public did not know that Gielgud was gay. Hensler, with Gielgud's approval, successful lobbied to have the 1988 program notes for Hugh Whitemore's play "Best of Friends" state that he and Gielgud had been a happy couple for many years, but it was not publicized by the press. That play proved to be Gielgud's final appearance in the theater.

Gielgud outlived his great contemporaries, Olivier and Richardson, the Three Knights of the Stage, by a decade. Benedict Nightingale wrote of the three, in 'The Times' (May 23, 2000) that, "Laurence Olivier was the most fiery and physically volatile, Ralph Richardson the earthiest and the quirkiest, but Gielgud was the most vocally exquisite, intellectually elegant and spiritually fine."

Sheridan Morley, his biographer, said: 'Since 1917, when he started in walk-on parts, he never had more than four weeks without work." In his career on stage, he had played every major Shakespearean role, including his favorite, Prospero in "The Tempest", which he later essayed for director Peter Greenaway in "Prospero's Books".

Gielgud could be seen as having made the career of his greatest acolyte, Laurence Olivier, his only rival for the title of Greatest Shakespearean Actor of the 20th Century, a contest most felt that Gielgud won due to the beauty of his phrasing and more cerebral interpretation of Shakespeare. (Olivier was generally considered the better actor in contemporary roles.) A great Richard II (as well as Hamlet), the generous Gielgud made his Bolingbroke possible through both his mentorship of the younger actor at the New Theatre during the 1935 season (where they alternated the roles of Romeo and Mercutio, with Gielgud getting the better reviews), and by reinventing Shakespeare as commercial theater in the 20th century. The modern, revitalized Shakespearean stage willingly embraced the more physical Olivier.

Director Sir Peter Hall, in eulogizing the great man, said. "His work at the Vic in the 1930s, then with his own company, was trailblazing. He was not an old-style actor wanting inferior actors around him so he would look the star, which was what happened in a lot of companies. He wanted to be around people who were better than he was. He believed in that kind of humility. His companies were very happy places, with one humorous qualification - that mercurial mind meant as a director he was always changing it."

Thus, Gielgud's greatest legacy was his work as an actor-manager in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when the commercial West End theater was generally frivolous and its Shakespeare as caught in amber as a D'Oyly Carte production of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Gielgud created classical companies that laid the foundations for the great renaissance of British theater that blossomed after the War, doing the groundwork at the New Theatre in 1935, at the Queen's Theatre in the 1937/38 seasons, and at the Haymarket in 1944. His companies featured in repertory Shakespeare, Sheridan, Congreve, and Chekhov, and his patronage of the design team Motley reinvented the look of British theatrical staging. Aside from Olivier, who went on to found the National Theatre, George Devine founded the English Stage Company in 1956, and Anthony Quayle and Glen Byam Shaw revitalized Stratford during the 1950s.

Without Gielgud, those paragons of the modern English theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, likely would not have come into existence. 'Percy' Harris, one of the Motley theatrical design team, said, "I think he single-handedly put English theater back on the map. Larry [Olivier] gets all the credit and John doesn't, which I think is a sign of John's innate modesty."

Gielgud wrote many books in his career, starting with a 1939 autobiography entitled "Early Stages." This was followed by "John Gielgud: An Actor's Biography in Pictures" in 1952, "Stage Directions" in 1963, "Distinguished Company" in 1972, the new autobiography "An Actor in His Time" in 1979 (revised 1989), "Backward Glances: Part One, Time for Reflection: Part Two, Distinguished Company" in 1989, "Teach Yourself" in 1990, and a primer for Shakespearean actors, "Shakespeare - Hit or Miss?" in 1991 (re-published as "Acting Shakespeare" in 1992). In 1994, "Notes from the Gods: Playgoing in the Twenties," based on Gielgud's annotated theater programs from the London theatrical productions from 1919-25, was published. The lifetime awards began to pile up: a BAFTA fellowship award for his lifetime contribution to show business in 1992, the renaming of the Globe Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue in London's West End as the Gielgud Theatre in 1994, and his appointment to the Order of Merit in 1996.

Gielgud and Hensler lived together in his later years at their country house, South Pavilion, at Wotton Underwood, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, where he died "simply of old age" on 21 May 2000, at 96. That night, the lights at the Gielgud Theatre and 12 others in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group were dimmed for three minutes in tribute to the passing of the man acclaimed as the greatest Shakespearean actor of the century.

At a small memorial service in Buckinghamshire, Sir Alec Guinness, Sir John Mills, Dame Maggie Smith and Lord Richard Attenborough were among those whom paid their respects to the legendary actor. His body was later cremated at a ceremony witnessed by a small group of those closest to him. A year after Gielgud's death, an archive of letters chronicling his personal and professional life was bequeathed to the nation and housed at the British Library. "Style", Gielgud once said, "is knowing what sort of play you're in."

Sir John Mills, one of the most popular and beloved English actors, was born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills on February 22, 1908, at the Watts Naval Training College in North Elmham, Norfolk, England. The young Mills grew up in Felixstowe, Suffolk, where his father was a mathematics teacher and his mother was a theater box-office manager. The Oscar-winner appeared in more than 120 films and TV movies in a career stretching over eight decades, from his debut in 1932 in Midshipmaid Gob (1932) through Bright Young Things (2003) and The Snow Prince (2009).

After graduating from the Norwich Grammar School for Boys, Mills rejected his father's academic career for the performing arts. After brief employment as a clerk in a grain merchant's office, he moved to London and enrolled at Zelia Raye's Dancing School. Convinced from the age of six that performing was his destiny, Mills said, "I never considered anything else."

After training as a dancer, he started his professional career in the music hall, appearing as a chorus boy at the princely sum of four pounds sterling a week in "The Five O'Clock Revue" at the London Hippodrome, in 1929. The short, wiry song-and-dance man was scouted by Noël Coward and began to appear regularly on the London stage in revues, musicals and legitimate plays throughout the 1930s. He appeared in a score of films before the war, "quota quickies" made under a system regulating the import of American films designed to boost local production. He was a juvenile lead in The Ghost Camera (1933), appeared in the musical Car of Dreams (1935), and then played lead roles in Born for Glory (1935), Nine Days a Queen (1936) and The Green Cockatoo (1937). His Hollywood debut was in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) with Robert Donat, but he refused the American studios' entreaties to sign a contract and stayed in England.

Mills relished acting in films, finding it a challenge rather than the necessary economic evil that many English actors at the time, such as Laurence Olivier, felt it was, and it was the cinema that would make him an internationally renowned star. He anchored his film career in military roles, such as those in his early pictures Born for Glory (1935) (a.k.a. "Forever England") and Raoul Walsh's You're in the Army Now (1937). He appeared in the classic In Which We Serve (1942), where he worked with his mentor Coward and with Coward's co-director David Lean, who would go on to direct Mills in some of his most memorable performances.

Throughout his film career Mills played a wide variety of military characters, portraying the quintessential English hero. He later tackled more complex characterizations, such as the emotionally troubled commander in Tunes of Glory (1960). He also played Field Marshal Haig in the satire Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) that mocked the entire genre. However, it was in his World War II films, which included We Dive at Dawn (1943), Waterloo Road (1945) and Johnny in the Clouds (1945), that Mills established himself as an innovative English film star.

With his ordinary appearance and everyman manner, Mills seemed "the boy-next-door," but the Mills hero was decent, loyal and brave, as well as tough and reliable under stress. In his military roles, he managed throughout his career to include enough subtle variations on the Mills heroic type to avoid appearing typed. He could play such straight heroes as Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as well as deconstruct the type in Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and "Tunes of Glory." The latter film features one of his finest film roles, that of the brittle Col. Basil Barrow, the new commander of a Scots battalion. Mills superbly played an emotionally troubled martinet in a role originally slated for Alec Guinness, his Great Expectations (1946) co-star, who decided to take the flashier role of the colonel's tormentor. It was one of Mills' favorite characters.

No male star of English cinema enjoyed such a long and rewarding career as a star while appearing predominantly in English films. As an actor, Mills chose his roles on the basis of the quality of the script rather than its propriety as a "star" turn. Because of this, he played roles that were more akin to character parts, such as shoemaker Willy Mossop in Hobson's Choice (1954). As he aged, his proclivity for well-written roles enabled him to make a seamless transition from a lead to character lead to character actor from the 1950s to the 1960s.

Almost 40 years after his film debut, Mills won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for playing the mute village idiot in Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970), an uncharacteristic part. In addition to "In Which We Serve" and "Ryan's Daughter," Lean had also directed Mills in memorable performances in This Happy Breed (1944) and "Hobson's Choice". He gave one of his finest turns as Pip in Lean's masterpiece "Great Expectations", in which Mills' performance was central to the success of the picture.

Other significant films in which Mills appeared include The Rocking Horse Winner (1949), King Vidor's War and Peace (1956), The Chalk Garden (1964), King Rat (1965), The Wrong Box (1966), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), Young Winston (1972) and Stanley Kramer's Oklahoma Crude (1973). He also appeared with his daughter Hayley Mills in Tiger Bay (1959) and The Family Way (1966) and had a cameo in her Disney hit The Parent Trap (1961). Mills appeared in a Disney hit of his own, Swiss Family Robinson (1960), as the paterfamilias. He had one of the better cameo parts in producer Mike Todd's epic Around the World in 80 Days (1956), playing a carriage driver, and appeared in a non-speaking part as Old Norway in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).

In 1967 he appeared in the short-lived American TV series Dundee and the Culhane (1967) on CBS. In the hour-long series Mills played an English lawyer named Dundee who roamed the Wild West with a young American lawyer named Culhane, who was also a fast draw with a six-gun. The network was disappointed with the quality of the show's writing and cancelled it after 13 episodes. One of the series' directors was Ida Lupino, who played Mills' sister in "The Ghost Camera" over 30 years before (Lupino also directed Hayley in The Trouble with Angels (1966)). Mills' most famous television role was probably the title character in ITV's Quatermass (1979).

He appeared on Broadway during the 1961-62 season as the lead character in Terence Rattigan's "Ross," a fictionalization of the life of T.E. Lawrence, for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Tony Award. His only other Broadway appearance was in the 1987 revival of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," in which he played Alfred Doolittle. The play was nominated for a Tony for Best Revival, and Amanda Plummer, playing his character's daughter, Eliza, also received a Tony nomination.

After divorcing Aileen Raymond, whom he had married at the age of 19, Mills married playwright Mary Hayley Bell on January 16, 1941. Since he was serving in the army, they could not have a church service, and they renewed their vows at St. Mary's Church, next to their home, Hills House, in Denham, England, in 2001.

Mills has worked as both producer and director: in 1966, he directed daughter Hayley in Gypsy Girl (1966) (a.k.a. "Gypsy Girl), from a script written by his wife. He produced "The Rocking Horse Winner" and The History of Mr. Polly (1949), the latter film featuring his older daughter Juliet Mills as a child. Whistle Down the Wind (1961) in which Hayley's character mistakes a runaway convict played by Alan Bates for Jesus Christ, was based on a novel written by Mary.

Living in Hollywood during the 1960s where his daughter Hayley enjoyed her own Oscar-winning career as a child star, Mills and his wife became very popular with members of the movie colony. After Hayley grew out of her child actress roles, Mills returned to England, where he continued his film work. He became a council member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a life patron of the Variety Club.

Mills was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1960 and was knighted in 1976. Although he suffered from deafness and failing eyesight and went almost completely blind in 1990, he continued to act, playing both blind and sighted characters with his customary joie de vivre and panache. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts honored him with a Special Tribute Award in 1987 and a Fellowship, its highest award, in 2002. He was honored with a British Film Institute Fellowship in 1995 and was named a Disney Legend by The Walt Disney Co.

After a brief illness, Sir John Mills died at the age of 97 on April 23, 2005, in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England. He was survived by his widow (who survived him by eight months), his son Jonathan, his daughters Juliet and Hayley, and his grandson Crispian Mills, the lead singer of the hit pop music group Kula Shaker. He was the author of an autobiography, "Up in the Clouds, Gentleman Please," published in 1981.

Scottish-born Finlay Currie was a former church organist and choirmaster, who made his stage debut at 20 years of age. It took him 34 more years before making his first film, but he worked steadily for another 30 years after that. Although he was a large, imposing figure, with a rich, deep voice and somewhat authoritarian demeanor, he was seldom cast in villainous parts. He received great acclaim for his role as Magwitch in Great Expectations (1946), and one of his best remembered roles was that of Balthazar in Ben-Hur (1959). He was also Shunderson, Cary Grant's devoted servant with a secret past in People Will Talk (1951). Later in his life he became a much respected antiques dealer, specializing in coins and precious metals (coinage). He died in England at age 90. While his biggest Academy Award-winning film, Ben-Hur (1959) was in its final four+ months of filming, he became a widower when his only wife, Maude Courtney, passed away.

Lugubrious-faced English actor Geoffrey Palmer was born in London, the son of a chartered accountant. After leaving school, he did his national service with the Royal Marines where he became a field training and small arms instructor. He then briefly tried his hand at accountancy before his girlfriend talked him into joining the local amateur dramatics society. Palmer started as an unpaid assistant stage manager at Croydon's Grand Theatre and afterwards spent several years touring in repertory. In 1955, he made the transition to television, at first as diverse straight supporting characters in popular early comedies like Bootsie and Snudge (1960) and The Army Game (1957), a series detailing the exploits and misadventures of a group of national service conscripts at a surplus ordnance depot. During much of the early and mid-60s, Palmer cut his teeth on prolific dramatic roles that came his way in seminal crime and mystery shows (The Saint (1962), The Avengers (1961), The Baron (1966), Z Cars (1962)), in which he often appeared as military types, politicians, or as legal or medical professionals. His personal credo was to never turn down a part.

By the 70s, Palmer was becoming well-established as a supporting actor in British television. He made two appearances in Doctor Who (1963) in the early 1970s (most notably as the ill-fated Edward Masters, Permanent Under-Secretary to the Minister of Science, in "The Silurians"). From there, he went on to co-starring success as Leonard Rossiter's hapless brother-in-law in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976), Wendy Craig's perpetually aloof and gloomy husband in Butterflies (1978) and as Lionel Hardcastle in the hugely popular sitcom As Time Goes By (1992) (opposite Judi Dench). He also starred as Major Harry Kitchener Wellington Truscott in Fairly Secret Army (1984), playing a buffoonish, reactionary ex-army man attempting to shape a disparate bunch of characters into a secret paramilitary organisation. Smaller (but memorable) guest spots have included his sausage-loving doctor in The Kipper and the Corpse (1979), the Foreign Secretary in Whoops Apocalypse (1982) and Field Marshal Haig in Blackadder Goes Forth (1989). Palmer appeared opposite Judi Dench again in the James Bond thriller Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and in Mrs. Brown (1997) as Queen Victoria's chief secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby. In 2007 he returned to Doctor Who as a guest star in the David Tennant era.

An instantly recognisable actor with jowly features and a trademark deadpan expression, Palmer's stock-in-trade persona was of a world-weary, disenchanted, droll or sarcastic disposition. Conversely, in private life, he was said to be rather more lighthearted and humorous. He once declared "I'm not grumpy. I just look this way." Nonetheless, he was great value in the BBC series Grumpy Old Men (2003) as one of several middle-aged narrators complaining about assorted irritations in modern life. In addition to several audio books, Palmer also lent his familiar voice to radio and to Audi TV ads. In his spare time he was an avid fly fisherman and a longstanding member of the Garrick Club in London.

Palmer was awarded in OBE in December 2004 for his services to drama.

Sir Michael Redgrave was of the generation of English actors that gave the world the legendary John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, Britain three fabled "Theatrical Knights" back in the days when a knighthood for thespian was far more rare than it is today. A superb actor, Redgrave himself was a charter member of the post-Great War English acting pantheon and was the sire of an acting dynasty. He and his wife, Rachel Kempson, were the parents of Vanessa Redgrave, Corin Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave and the grandparents of Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson and Jemma Redgrave.

Rare is the reference to Margaret Rutherford that doesn't characterize her as either jut-chinned, eccentric, or both. The combination of those most mundane of attributes has led some to suggest that she was made for the role of Agatha Christie's indomitable sleuth, Jane Marple, whom Rutherford portrayed in four films between 1961 and 1964 plus in an uncredited film cameo in The Alphabet Murders (1965). Rutherford began her acting career first as a student at London's Old Vic, debuting on stage in 1925. In 1933, she first appeared in the West End at the not-so-tender age of 41. She had made her screen debut in 1936 portraying Miss Butterby in the Twickenham-Wardour production of Hideout in the Alps (1936).

In summer 1941, Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit opened on the London stage, with Coward himself directing. Appearing as Madame Arcati, the genuine psychic, was Rutherford, in a role in which Coward had earlier envisaged her and which he then especially shaped for her. She would carry her portrayal of Madame Arcati to the screen adaptation, David Lean's Blithe Spirit (1945). Not only would this become one of Rutherford's most memorable screen performances - with her bicycling about the Kentish countryside, cape fluttering behind her - but it would establish the model for portraying that pseudo-soothsayer forever thereafter. Despite Rutherford's appearances in more than 40 films, it is as Madame Arcati and Miss Jane Marple that she will best be remembered.

Wendy Hiller, daughter of Frank and Marie Hiller, was born on 15th August 1912 in Bramhall, near Stockport, Cheshire, England. She was educated at Winceby House School, Bexhill then moved on to Manchester Repertory Theatre. She appeared on stage in Sir John Barry's tour of Evensong, then as Sally Hardcastle in Love on the Dole. She toured extensively, playing in London and New York. She took leading parts in Pygmalion and Saint Joan at the Malvern Festival in 1936.

John Laurie was a Scotsman who would play many character roles in his long career - a lot of Scotsmen to be sure - but an enthusiastic and skilled actor in nearly 120 screen roles. He was the son of a mill worker, and studied for a career in architecture which he indeed began. But with World War I he left his position to join the British army. After the war he set his sights in a different direction, training to become an actor by attending the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. His first stage play was in 1921. He honed his skills thereafter (from 1922 to 1939) principally as a Shakespearian actor at the Old Vic in London or at Stratford-upon-Avon - and later the Open Air in Regent's Park. But by 1930 he was giving time to films as well. His first movie was the Sean O'Casey play Juno and the Paycock (1930), one of Alfred Hitchcock's early sound efforts. With his craggy profile and arcing bulbous nose, and rather stern visage (though it could as quickly break into a broad smile), he was right for many a memorable character. Hitchcock made sure of that first off by calling on him again to play the dour, suspicious, and miserly farmer, John Crofter, in The 39 Steps (1935). Laurie became a good friend of another Shakespearean, Laurence Olivier, and the two, Olivier as a lead, were in Hungarian director/producer Paul Czinner's As You Like It (1936). The year 1937 was a busy one, with six films, the most important giving him one of his few leading roles. This was director/screen writer Michael Powell's intriguing The Edge of the World (1937), doubly important in that it was the film that sold Powell to producers like Alexander Korda. The film was shot on location on the remote Shetland isle of Foula, the furthest point of Britain. It dealt with the impact of the modern world on the lives of the inhabitants of an economically decaying island. Into 1938 and 1939 Laurie was involved in British experimental TV movies, that medium to be revisit later frequently. In 1939 he was taped by Alexander Korda for his classic film production of The Four Feathers (1939) in which Laurie, who could fit his Scots voice to any part, played the zealous Mahdi (the Khalifa). He is hardly to be recognized in character.

During the war Olivier was planning one of the important morale movies of World War II; his Henry V (1944), and Laurie was asked to play a memorable Capt. Jamie. Olivier also called on him for his two other Shakespeare ventures: Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955). As any good character actor, Laurie could play comedy as well and set a number of roles to that end into the 1940s. He and Roger Livesey were cast in Emeric Pressburger and Powell's first color film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). And Laurie was a jubilant John Campbell in the Powell/Pressburger wonderful and thoughtful comedy of more insular Scots life, I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) with a delightful young Wendy Hiller and worldly-wise Livesey.

Through the remainder of the decade and into the 1950s, Laurie's face showed up in a variety of films - with greater frequency as assorted Scotsmen-comedic and otherwise - and further down the credits list of supporting actors. He was familiar in the decade invasion to the UK of American co-productions, such as Disney's Treasure Island (1950) and Kidnapped (1960). And he even trod the uncertain path of a few sci-fi films - that shall remain nameless here. But he was certainly always busy - when all told - the actor's foremost blessing. Television drama and series gave him better opportunities for a veteran actor, beginning with a Henry V (1953) where he played the comic role of Pistol. Along with some BBC TV theater (more Shakespeare and some American playhouse as well) and sporadic serials, he had a stint on the long-running BBC children's reading program "Jackanory". And he is probably best remembered as the dour James Frazer on the popular "Dad's Army" series (1968-1977). But one of his last and most touching performance was simply being his good-natured self - 80 years old but still a vibrant man with his Scots burr - when he accompanied Powell back to dramatically isolated Foula for the director's short documentary Return to the Edge of the World (1978) (included with the 2003 DVD release of the 1937 movie). There was a bit of staging by Powell. But Laurie's animated face was a picture of profound humanity, as - with a shade of theatrics when appropriate - he remembered the shoot and with sincere joy renewed acquaintances with the inhabitants, as if he himself had returned once more to his native heath. A bonnie old actor indeed!

Although a prolific television character actress for almost half a century, Hilary Mason will be best remembered on screen as the blind, psychic Heather in the macabre supernatural thriller Don't Look Now (1973). The 1973 film starred Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as John and Laura Baxter, a grieving couple holidaying in a wintry Venice after the death of their daughter, Christine, who was drowned in the garden pond while wearing a shiny, red mackintosh. When Laura meets the two spinster sisters in a restaurant toilet, she is shocked to be told that Heather has seen her daughter. "I've seen her and she wants you to know that she's happy," says the old woman:

I've seen your little girl, sitting between you and your husband, and she was laughing. Yes, oh, yes, she's with you, my dear, and she's laughing. She's wearing a shiny little mac. She's laughing, she's laughing - she's happy as can be.

Later, Laura attends a seance with the sisters and - when Heather gets what she claims to be a message from Christine - is disturbed to be told that her husband, John (Sutherland), is in danger. A skeptical John fails to heed the warning and in the final scenes of the film is murdered by a female dwarf in a red, hooded coat. Throughout this eerie film, based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, the director, Nicolas Roeg, leaves us unsure whether Mason's chilling character really is a psychic or a con artist, particularly in a scene showing the sisters laughing after convincing Laura that they have contacted her daughter.

Born in Birmingham in 1917, Mason won a scholarship to the London School of Dramatic Art before gaining repertory theater experience in Preston, Southport, York and Guildford. During the Second World War she performed with the troops entertainment organization Ensa.

Mason made her television debut as Mrs Drummond in the drama series Thunder in the West (1957), and played Mrs Yapp in the Midlands-based local council serial Swizzlewick (1964) and Mrs Timothy in the soccer soap United! (1965). She as well took two roles in Coronation Street (1960); following a bit-part as Mrs Ainsworth (1965), she was then Derek Wilton's mother (1976), who disapproved of her son's relationship with the dithering Mavis Riley and insisted it must end - to no avail.

Adept at character roles, Mason took eight different parts in Z Cars (1962), and another three in Dixon of Dock Green (1955), before playing Lady Boleyn in the acclaimed, six-part drama The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) (starring Keith Michell in the title role), Mrs Nickleby in Nicholas Nickleby (1977), Mrs Gummidge in David Copperfield (1986), and Mrs Fagge in Great Expectations (1989).

In comedy, she acted Mrs Booth, exasperated mother to the chalk-and-cheese twin brothers, in My Brother's Keeper (1975) and Gladys in Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (1989), the children's series written by Tony Robinson - with Mason's real-life husband, the actor Roger Ostime, taking the role of Gladys's father in one episode. She also played Michael Palin's mother in the Ripping Yarns (1976) episode The Curse of the Claw (1977).

After her part in "Don't Look Now", Mason was cast in the horror films Sharon's Baby (1975) (acting Mrs Hyde, alongside Joan Collins as a stripper who gives birth to a "possessed" baby, 1975), Dolls (1986), Afraid of the Dark (1991), and Haunted (1995).

Mason also appeared twice in One Foot in the Grave (1990) during the 1990s.

She died in 2006 in Milton Keynes, England and left a husband of 50 years, Roger Ostime; they had married in 1955 in Surrey.

Beryl Reid was the daughter of Scottish parents and grew up in industrial Manchester, England. She left home at the age of 16 to go and work in a shop. She lasted 6 weeks. She applied for and was accepted in a revue in the Summer season in Bridlington. She had no formal training but joined the National Theater in London as a comedy actress. Her first big success came in the BBC radio show "Educating Archie" (a ventriloquist - on the radio). She played the naughty schoolgirl, Monica, and later, the Brummie Marlene. Her film roles were few and far between, but always well received. She transferred her Tony award winning performance of the lesbian radio star to the screen in The Killing of Sister George (1968). But she was best known and loved for her (slightly tipsy) older ladies such as in The Beiderbecke Tapes (1987) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979).

Tenniel Evans briefly attended the British Army officer training centre Sandhurst (1945-1946). He studied German and economics at St. Andrews University (1946-1949). He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1949-1951) and acted on stage from 1951, although he also had an in-between job as a private school teacher near Northampton. His regular stage work included West End performances as well as the Royal Court Theatre Company, Savoy Theatre and Globe Theatre. He was part of the cast of the hugely popular 1960s radio comedy "The Navy Lark". He appeared in television from 1960. Evans is fondly remembered by cult television fans as Major Daly, acting opposite his friend Jon Pertwee, in Carnival of Monsters: Episode One (1973) and as Kevin's (Michael Palin's) puritanical father in The Curse of the Claw (1977).

One of the finest exponents of the art of light comedy acting, Michael Denison enjoyed a highly successful career both on stage and screen. He and his wife, actress Dulcie Gray, appeared in over 100 West End shows and their marriage, which lasted nearly sixty years, was regarded as one of the happiest in British show business.

Denison was born in Doncaster, the son of a paint manufacturer, and was brought up by aunt and her husband. He was educated at Harrow and Magdalen College, where he read modern languages. He trained for the stage at Webber Douglas School in London where he met and married Dulcie Gray in 1939.

During World War Two, he served in the Royal Intelligence Corps and, by the time he had returned to the theatre, his wife was already a major film star in Britain. She secured him a role in the 1947 film My Brother Jonathan (1948). The following year, they appeared together in The Glass Mountain (1949), which became an international hit.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the couple were rarely off the West End stage where they attracted a loyal following. Denison appeared solo with great success in the TV series Boyd Q.C. (1956) (1956-63).

He appeared on Broadway in Oscar Wilde's, "An Ideal Husband", and, shortly before he died, he and his wife appeared in a two-hander production "Curtain Up" in a London fringe theatre.

Denison published two volumes of memoirs, "Overture and Beginners" (1973) and "Double Act" (1985). He also contributed many entries to the Dictionary of National Biography. He and Dulcie Gray were appointed CBE in 1983.

John Mortimer was a prolific writer for the theatre, films (starting during World War II, when he wrote scripts for the Crown Film Unit), television and radio. He also writes fiction and was a trial attorney for more than 30 years. Arguably his most famous creation is Horace Rumpole, "barrister at law, 68 next birthday, Old Bailey hack, husband to Mrs Hilda Rumpole," the protagonist and narrator of dozens of stories. (The quotation comes from Rumpole and the Younger Generation.) On television, Leo McKern personified Rumpole for the better part of two decades.

Reginald Beckwith was born on 2 November 1908 in York, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Thunderball (1965), Sword of Lancelot (1963) and Curse of the Demon (1957). He died on 26 June 1965 in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, England, UK.

An influential figure in the world of British television comedy during the 1960s and 70s, actor and comedian John Junkin wrote scripts for such shows as The Army Game, The World of Beachcomber, Queenie's Castle, plus scripts for many comedians, including Ted Ray, Jim Davidson, Bob Monkhouse and Mike Yarwood.

As an actor he became familiar to TV soap viewers when he starred in East Enders (2001), playing Ernie, a mysterious stranger who suddenly appears at the Queen Vic.

Junkin was born in Ealing, West London. Educated locally, he worked as a teacher in the East End of London but said he hated the job. "I loved the kids," he recalled. "But hated the adults and bores of the Education Authority."

In 1960 he joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford East and was in the original cast of Littlewood's production of Sparrers Can't Sing with Barbara Windsor.

Throughout the sixties and seventies he was one of the busiest men on television, both as a performer and scriptwriter. The comedian Marty Feldman won the Golden Rose Award with a Junkin script in 1972 and with Barry Cryer and others, Junkin contributed to many of the Morecambe and Wise specials for the BBC. He also wrote, with Bill Tidy, The Fosdyke Saga, and The Grumbleweeds for radio.

He had a prolific career in the cinema playing a variety of straight and comic roles and described himself as easy to cast: "I look like the bloke next door," he said. "I always seem to be wearing one of those sheepskin coats."

In the latter part of his career, Junkin became disillusioned with show business, particularly television. He fell out with a producer - he never revealed which one - over the writing of a game show for which he had devised the format. Litigation cost him £70,000 and he was also in debt to the tax man to the tune of £120,000. He did, however, return to scriptwriting and contributed to The Crazy World of Joe Pasquale (1998) and The Impressionable Jon Culshaw (2004) and he was much in demand as an after dinner speaker.

Close friend, former Radio 1 disc jockey Dave Lee Travis, said: If you were in conversation with John, you were always in a state of hilarity. He had no airs and graces."

Stringer Davis was born on 4 June 1899 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Murder She Said (1961), Murder Most Foul (1964) and Murder at the Gallop (1963). He was married to Margaret Rutherford. He died on 29 August 1973 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England, UK.

Educated at Bristol and London, he studied to be a doctor. During the war he served with the Royal Sussex Regiment in Europe and the Middle East. On being demobbed he joined the film industry as an assistant editor at Denham Studios working on October Man (1947) and Hamlet (1948) then as 1st assistant editor on Madness of the Heart. When he became director and worked on the Carry on films he always had a tight shooting schedule which never exceeded 6 weeks. Despite this he had a great sense of fun often playing tricks on the cast such as filling Joan Sims' glass with gin instead of water in Carry on Regardless and hosing down the beauty contestants in Carry on Girls when they were only expecting a damping down from sprinklers.

John Paul was born on 20 April 1921 in Hertfordshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Eye of the Needle (1981), Doomwatch (1972) and Doomwatch (1970). He was married to Jean ?. He died on 23 February 1995 in Buckinghamshire, England, UK.

Carlos Douglas was born on 26 December 1935 in Spain. He was an actor, known for Affairs of the Heart (1974), The Flying Swan (1965) and Dixon of Dock Green (1955). He died on 18 December 2004 in Buckinghamshire, England, UK.

Nicholas Parsons was without doubt one of the UK's most popular and beloved television and radio personalities, and very few can claim to have had such a long entertainment career. The son of a doctor, he was raised in Lincolnshire until the age of eight, when the family moved to London. He was educated at St. Paul's School, London. He trained as an engineer but really wanted to become an actor and decided to pursue his dream. He performed in weekly repertory in Bromley for two years, playing a wide range of parts. His particular talent for comedy and impersonations made him a natural in cabaret and he became the resident comedian at the Windmill Theatre. Much work in radio followed.

Parsons acted in several British films during the 1950s and 1960s, including dramas such as The Third Key (1956) and Eyewitness (1956) and comedies such as Doctor in Love (1960) and Carry on Regardless (1961). On television he worked with Eric Barker and most notably on The Arthur Haynes Show (1956) as Haynes' straight man. In 1967 he became presenter of "Just a Minute", a comedy panel show on BBC Radio 4 which also featured regular appearances by Kenneth Williams over the next 20 years. Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, Parsons hosted the hugely popular ITV game show Sale of the Century (1971).

In 1989, having become so closely associated with comedy and light entertainment, Parsons surprised many when he returned to a dramatic role. He brought great depth and sensitivity to his portrayal of Reverend Wainwright, a tormented clergyman whose faith is tested to the limit by the horrors of the Second World War and the resurrection of a Viking curse in The Curse of Fenric: Part One (1989). It was one of the most unusual and complex characterizations ever created for the Doctor Who (1963) series, and Parsons later described this guest appearance as "one of the most treasured memories".

Parsons celebrated his 90th birthday in 2013 and he was joined at the party by stars including Esther Rantzen, Paul Merton and Gyles Brandreth. A performer of remarkable longevity, he was still taking his one-man show to the Edinburgh Fringe.

Bill Moody was born on 13 July 1949 in Southwark, London, England, UK. He was an actor and director, known for Revolver (2005), Love Actually (2003) and The Long Good Friday (1980). He died on 8 June 2012 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, UK.

This ill-fated British actress was born in the Shepherd's Bush area of London, England, on February 27, 1936. After the outbreak of World War II, young Virginia and her family were evacuated to South Africa. She eventually returned to London and entered a convent school where the pretty, gray-eyed brunette developed an interest in acting.

Virginia attended drama school and finally broke into the business with TV parts, usually playing demure young lasses in assorted dashing action series such as "The Buccaneers" and The Adventures of Robin Hood." Making a minor film debut for director Roy Boulting with Happy Is the Bride (1958), she achieved better notices with her second film. In Our Virgin Island (1958), she played the bride of John Cassavetes who learns to adapt to a Robinson Crusoe-styled existence. Co-starring an up-and-coming Sidney Poitier, the story lightly tinges on racial issues.

On the strength of this, Virginia won a contract with British Lion Pictures and showcased well in The Man Upstairs (1958) with Richard Attenborough, but less so playing a airline stewardess in the mediocre Jet Storm (1959) which also wasted a top-notch cast including Attenborough, Mai Zetterling, Diane Cilento, Stanley Baker and Sybil Thorndike.

Virginia's reticent but sincere approach to films worked remarkably well in an understated way, and she proved just as quietly compelling on stage with a prime role in "The Catalyst" in 1958 with Phil Brown and Renée Asherson. She showed escalating promise and earned BAFTA nominations for her memorable work in Young and Willing (1962) and as Peter Sellers' forlorn wife in Only Two Can Play (1962), but then all filming stopped.

This abrupt end was primarily due to her marriage in 1962 and a change of focus on family life. Other than occasional TV appearances in such popular series as "Danger Man" and "The Prisoner," Virginia was seldom seen. It was learned that following the birth of her second son in February, 1966, she began showing acute signs of post-natal depression.

In the summer of 1967 Virginia returned auspiciously to filming with a remake of the soap drama Interlude (1968) playing the cast-off wife of orchestra conductor Oskar Werner. She suffered a severe nervous breakdown following the film's shoot and never recovered.

On a bitterly cold day on January 24, 1968, Virginia took a major overdose of antidepressants, drove away from her home at Princes Risborough. She was found collapsed in a nearby wooded area the next day suffering from acute hypothermia. Although she was revived briefly, she died shortly after at a nearby hospital.

Virginia won a posthumous National Board of Review award and a BAFTA nomination for her work in "Interlude." During her relatively short career, the actress seemed doomed to play unhappy, sympathetic third parties in romantic triangles. While a notable sadness touched many of Virginia Maskell's roles, her performances are all the more haunting to watch knowing her personal tragedy.

Bruce Bould was born in June 1949 in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976), As Time Goes By (1992) and Churchill's People (1974). He was married to Theresa Watson. He died on 15 May 2023 in Buckinghamshire, England, UK.