Check out the most anticipated movies and shows premiering during the summer season, from [i]Ballerina[/i] to [i]Thunderbolts*[/i].

IMDb Summer Watch Guide

Check out the most anticipated movies and shows premiering during the summer season, from <em>Ballerina</em> to <em>Thunderbolts*</em>.

These actors totally transform for their roles. See them in some of their most memorable moments.

The Greatest Character Actors of All Time

Update your watchlist with these hilarious, riveting, and tell-all stand-up specials from [link=/name/nm1983888]Vir Das[/link], [link=/name/nm4399227]Ali Wong[/link], [link=/name/nm5307044]Ronny Chieng[/link], and more.

30+ Stand-Up Specials by Asian Comedians

Update your watchlist with these hilarious, riveting, and tell-all stand-up specials from <a class="ipc-md-link" href="/name/nm1983888?ref_=nmmi_eds_right-7_lk">Vir Das</a>, <a class="ipc-md-link" href="/name/nm4399227?ref_=nmmi_eds_right-7_lk">Ali Wong</a>, <a class="ipc-md-link" href="/name/nm5307044?ref_=nmmi_eds_right-7_lk">Ronny Chieng</a>, and more.

Basil Rathbone and Claire Trevor in Crossroads (1942)

Basil Rathbone and Kay Francis in A Notorious Affair (1930)

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in Terror by Night (1946)

Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Gerald Hamer, Dennis Hoey, and Janet Murdoch in Terror by Night (1946)

Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, and Alan Mowbray in Terror by Night (1946)

Basil Rathbone and Renee Godfrey in Terror by Night (1946)

Basil Rathbone and Dennis Hoey in Terror by Night (1946)

Basil Rathbone, William Austin, and Dorothy Mackaill in The Flirting Widow (1930)

Basil Rathbone in The Flirting Widow (1930)

Basil Rathbone and Dorothy Mackaill in The Flirting Widow (1930)

Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Mackaill, and Wilfred Noy in The Flirting Widow (1930)

Basil Rathbone, Herbert Bunston, Moon Carroll, and Mackenzie Ward in The Lady of Scandal (1930)

Basil Rathbone and Mae Murray in The Masked Bride (1925)

Basil Rathbone and Orangey in The Comedy of Terrors (1963)

Basil Rathbone, Ruth Chatterton, and Ralph Forbes in The Lady of Scandal (1930)

Basil Rathbone in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Basil Rathbone and Ida Lupino in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, and Henry Stephenson in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Basil Rathbone in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

Basil Rathbone, Lionel Atwill, Richard Greene, and Rita Page in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

Basil Rathbone and E.E. Clive in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

Basil Rathbone and Richard Greene in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, and Carl Harbord in Dressed to Kill (1946)

Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Leyland Hodgson, and Dennis Hoey in Terror by Night (1946)

Basil Rathbone, Hillary Brooke, Nigel Bruce, and Milburn Stone in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)

Basil Rathbone, Preston Foster, and John Wood in The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)

Basil Rathbone in The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)

Basil Rathbone and Norma Shearer in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929)

Basil Rathbone and Rose Hobart in A Lady Surrenders (1930)

Basil Rathbone and Billie Dove in A Notorious Affair (1930)

Basil Rathbone, Billie Dove, and Kay Francis in A Notorious Affair (1930)

Gary Cooper, Basil Rathbone, George Barbier, and Sigrid Gurie in The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)

Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., Basil Rathbone, Herbert Rudley, and Phyllis Stanley in The Black Sleep (1956)

Basil Rathbone was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1892, but three years later his family was forced to flee the country because his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy at a time when Dutch-British conflicts were leading to the Boer War. The Rathbones escaped to England, where Basil and his two younger siblings, Beatrice and John, were raised. Their mother, Anna Barbara (George), was a violinist, who was born in Grahamstown, South Africa, of British parents, and their father, Edgar Philip Rathbone, was a mining engineer born in Liverpool. From 1906 to 1910 Rathbone attended Repton School, where he was more interested in sports--especially fencing, at which he excelled--than studies, but where he also discovered his interest in the theater. After graduation he planned to pursue acting as a profession, but his father disapproved and suggested that his son try working in business for a year, hoping he would forget about acting. Rathbone accepted his father's suggestion and worked as a clerk for an insurance company--for exactly one year. Then he contacted his cousin Frank Benson, an actor managing a Shakespearean troupe in Stratford-on-Avon.

Rathbone was hired as an actor on the condition that he work his way through the ranks, which he did quite rapidly. Starting in bit parts in 1911, he was playing juvenile leads within two years. In 1915 his career was interrupted by the First World War. During his military service, as a second lieutenant in the Liverpool Scottish 2nd Battalion, he worked in intelligence and received the Military Cross for bravery. In 1919, released from military service, he returned to Stratford-on-Avon and continued with Shakespeare but after a year moved onto the London stage. The year after that he made his first appearance on Broadway and his film debut in the silent Innocent (1921).

For the remainder of the decade Rathbone alternated between the London and New York stages and occasional appearances in films. In 1929 he co-wrote and starred as the title character in a short-running Broadway play called "Judas". Soon afterwards he abandoned his first love, the theater, for a film career. During the 1920s his roles had evolved from the romantic lead to the suave lady-killer to the sinister villain (usually wielding a sword), and Hollywood put him to good use during the 1930s in numerous costume romps, including Captain Blood (1935), David Copperfield (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Tower of London (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940) and others. Rathbone earned two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938).

However, it was in 1939 that Rathbone played his best-known and most popular character, Sherlock Holmes, with Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, first in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and then in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), which were followed by 12 more films and numerous radio broadcasts over the next seven years.

Feeling that his identification with the character was killing his film career, Rathbone went back to New York and the stage in 1946. The next year he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Dr. Sloper in the Broadway play "The Heiress," but afterwards found little rewarding stage work. Nevertheless, during the last two decades of his life, Rathbone was a very busy actor, appearing on numerous television shows, primarily drama, variety and game shows; in occasional films, such as Casanova's Big Night (1954), The Court Jester (1955), Tales of Terror (1962) and The Comedy of Terrors (1963); and in his own one-man show, "An Evening with Basil Rathbone", with which he toured the U.S.

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Basil Rathbone

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