Peter Sellers Newsletter
Sign-up to receive daily news on Peter Sellers by email.
Peter Sellers Filmography
Source:
Theiapolis
Peter Sellers Resources
Richard Henry Sellers (September 8, 1925 - July 24, 1980), better known as
Peter Sellers, was a British comedian, talented comic actor, and performer on The Goon Show (a long-running BBC radio show, 1951-1960). Sellers was born in Southsea, Hampshire, England, to a family of vaudeville entertainers.
Probably following his family in the vaudeville circuit, Sellers learnt this popular yet difficult art and the immediate instinct of the "gag". He was an incredibly versatile artist: an excellent dancer, a skillful player of the ukulele and banjo, and a drummer good enough to tour with several jazz bands. He is known to have performed at the Windmill Theatre.
During World War II, Sellers was an airman in the Royal Air Force, rising to corporal by the end of the war. During his leisure periods, he did impersonations of his superiors. This helped Sellers in his later film Dr. Strangelove.
His success was quite slow in coming. He phoned up a television producer pretending to be Kenneth Horne, who was currently in the show Much Binding in the Marsh
, in order to get them to speak to him. Success came as one of the goons on the radio programme The Goon Show with fellow comedians
Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine and was followed by early television work.
Sellers' first film successes were in 1959 in the British Ealing comedies, such as The Ladykillers
, I'm All Right Jack
and The Mouse That Roared; however, he is most famous for his role as the bungling Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies, which gave him a worldwide audience. The movie The Trail of the Pink Panther was released posthumously in 1982, containing previously unused footage of Sellers.
He played other more challenging parts, notably the triple role consisting of President Merkin Muffley of the United States, Dr. Strangelove, and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the RAF (the first two appearing in the same room throughout the film) in
Stanley Kubrick's ', easily varying from brilliant themes as in The Party
, to more intense performances as in Lolita (from Vladimir Nabokov's notorious masterpiece). A late masterpiece for Sellers was the film Being There.
Commonly considered a master actor, sometimes described as an "obsessive perfectionist", Sellers found in
Blake Edwards a devoted director who could delicately underline and follow his comic rhythms; Edwards defined Sellers as a "mercurial clown" who could turn comedy into drama, and vice-versa, in an instant.
Other directors Sellers worked under include Roman Polanski, Paul Mazursky, and
Billy Wilder. He appeared with many stars, among them
Shirley MacLaine,
Sophia Loren,
Maggie Smith,
Goldie Hawn,
Shelley Winters,
Elke Sommer,
Claudine Longet, and even
Ringo Starr (The Beatles' drummer).
He was nominated twice for an Academy Award, but was unsuccessful on both occasions although he won a British Academy Award (BAFTA) for
I'm Alright Jack.
Sellers was married four times, his second marriage was to the Swedish actress Britt Ekland. His wife at the time of his death was Lynne Frederick, who later married Sir David Frost.
Another interesting trait of his character was his love for cars; he was believed to have owned and sold a few tens of different cars by the late sixties.
Sellers died of a heart attack on July 24, 1980, in London, England and was cremated. His premature death was perhaps hastened by his belief in so called "quack medicine", including psychic surgery. In his will he had explicitly requested that Glenn Miller's song "In The Mood" be played for his funeral; it is considered his last touch of humour, since he deeply hated that tune.
Roger Lewis wrote about the "madness" and bizarre behavior of Sellers in his biography,
The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (Applause Books, 1997). Lewis' biography was adapted for the HBO movie, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), with
Geoffrey Rush in the title role.
In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, Sellers was voted amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
-
Films >>
Table of Content
Latest Film News
See Also:
