We kind of regret over-using the phrase ‘starting as he meant to go on’ in these entries, because what have we got...
Of course, in our ongoing mission to be smugly contrary, we immediately scanned the man’s CV for non-police, non-military roles. And we...
One of those actresses often described as having a ‘disappointing’ career, meaning that after her pre-adult film roles of increasing skill (culminating...
A late arrival to the actors’ ball, Freddie Jones got stuck into cinema with enviable gusto. It’s more likely the prevalence of...
She didn’t just go straight from being the daughter of a Kiwi butcher to The Forsyte Saga, you know. She had a...
Positioned firmly at the opposite end of the optical scale from Madeline Smith, Don was similarly wedded to the horror genre from...
He’s not always a screen villain, as he’d be at pains to remind you, but when he is, he’s a fantastic one...
A trained mime, yet! Now, why didn’t we see any of that on screen? What we did get, however, was a veritable...
From the off, she was pretty much the embodiment of the all-new, empowered yet still slightly floaty post-’60s middle class lady with...
Len’s sitcom trait – admittedly a technically brilliant and very funny one – of talking at 200 miles per hour, often seeming...
The standard breakdown goes with Honor: pre- and post-telly film roles. Before getting it together with the bowler hat, she notched up...
Picked out of the crowd to replace a co-star in, er, A Girl in the Crowd – possibly the least believable showbiz...
Difficult to imagine Sir Michael leaping about on a chat show sofa at the height of his fame, but then in those...
The ex-French Resistance fighter was only in films for the money, he reckoned, but if that’s the case he picked his cash...
It may seem like a career Ground Zero for those coming at the monocular Aussie’s works from the wrong end, but Rumpole...
Who new the young man who put the lifts in at Broadcasting House would go on to forge a formidable line in...
Crypto-European man of letters who, when he wasn’t helping Powell and Pressburger with dialogue, divided his time between upper crust British types...
Two separate careers, or two ends of the same cackling candle? There’s the filthy Johannesburger’s comedy cockney sark, from Hancock through to...
‘The formidable South African bear’ as the tragically premature obituaries would have it, Nigel Green towered over Michael Caine in The Ipcress...
That it’s possible to get worked up about The Mezh being solely known for a single role of such manifold brilliance and...
There are no middles with Miles Malleson. He’s either right at the top of the social pecking order (Sir Oswald Pettiford, the...
Never mind the muted trumpet-themed sitcom years, the early ’60s saw Anton turn out a slew of capable turns (though admittedly seldom...
Any enemy of Stanley Kubrick is a friend of ours. Any former star of Moon Zero Two, Vampire Circus and Quo Vadis...
This little exercise is all about exploring the folk who populate lower ends of the bill as much the stars, and Marianne...
We’ll have to watch what we say here. Does he still hate people banging on about Dracula or not? We don’t remember....
A giant among vampire killers. Endlessly professional, with just enough of a sense of humour creeping in under the floorboards, Cushing more...
Much more than a smart way to shut up bores who demand a list of famous Belgians, Aud quickly moved up the...
‘She’s a doll! She’s a dish! She’s a delinquent!’ Yep, Sylv’s early break as the wild child daughter of Anna Neagle in...
Jenny Hanley’s mum. Started in small, unglamorous roles, possibly the least gitzy of which was as George Formby’s cleaning lady. Paul Temple....
Try saying that name without bursting out cheering. We know we can’t. And you think Disney: wobbly split-screen doubling-up in The Parent...
Another graduate from music hall to period smoulder, as the less wicked of the assorted Gainsborough girls. She was the least screwed...
Mike Davis once more: ‘A sort of Carry On regular beauty and earlier even in the St T films. Nice performance as...
Oh, great. This billing will be like summarising Proust, won’t it? Er… dancing sideways on with Anthony Quinn… not being Jesus in...
You’ve already got a mental picture of a charlady in your head, possibly augmented by that distinctive ‘cockney lady trying to put...
It’s like conducting a clandestine affair. There’s Our Beryl, dear old comedy actress of Two-Way Stretch and St Trinian’s fame, all prim...
She started off as straight girl to the likes of Arthur Askey and Tommy Handley, but when Gainsborough came a-knocking with a...
When you get to people like the lanky, squash-nosed Sam Kydd, you’re in vague territory. No-one’s quite sure exactly how many films...
It took Shirley a while to get up to full steam on the screen. Have a look at her performances in ’50s...
Rightly revered for his sonorous ‘Tomorrow’s New Yesterday’ radio voice, on screen Dyall started out during wartime playing stock Nazis in Colonel...
The well-born Felixstovian had the makings of a highly-respected, if rather boringly respectable, film career: bit part in Singin’ in the Rain,...
One of those stars who, if it wasn’t for the fact she’s so often ignored these days, we’d think twice about putting...
Stuffy old film lore has her pudding-proving moment down as her depressed ballerina to C Chaplin’s down and out comic in Limelight,...
Mike Davis again steps up to the lectern: ‘The original and the best, who could probably out shout Brian Blessed at ten...
As nominated by Mike Davis: ‘So good as the forerunner of Mr Mackay from Porridge as “CPO Crouty” in the Peter Sellers...
As Madeline Smith was to ’70s British horror, so Barbara Shelley was to ’50s and ’60s Brit horror and sci-fi, times ten....
Derided by petifogging walloons the world over for being ‘too nice’ as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, which we just can’t agree...
If your childhood was anything like ours, a) you’re in serious trouble, and b) you’ll have first noticed La Hayden in Shillingbury...
We’ve neither the time nor the sufficient number of decimal places to calculate exactly how many ‘Faces of the Sxties’, male and...
Another of those actors who did films ‘purely’ to subsidise their more important work on the stage, but such snobbery is by...
Very possibly the only bounder to make it to full National Treasure status (though Nigel Havers – who funnily enough played Niven...
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