The well-born Felixstovian had the makings of a highly-respected, if rather boringly respectable, film career: bit part in Singin’ in the Rain,...
Recent studies have shown that the average man aged between thirty and forty spent 20{30e2395aaf6397fd02d2c79d91a1fe7cbb73158454674890018aee9c53a0cb96} of his formative years… let’s say ‘contemplating’...
Sometimes an actor can be hamstrung by physical appearance, and the inevitable physiological shorthand that attaches itself to them via the medium...
‘The British Lucille Ball!’ Nah, she was better than that. You don’t have to be Morrissey to appreciate the former Tiller Girl...
The convent’s loss was the screen’s gain, as FA swapped her dreams of nunnery for a role as a pupil in Carry...
The ex-French Resistance fighter was only in films for the money, he reckoned, but if that’s the case he picked his cash...
Some actors just understand the subtlety of screen acting by instinct (and we’re not talking about the Michael Caine masterclass where he...
There’s nothing wrong with an actor specialising, if he does it well. And when it came to short, Jewish cockneys with an...
Oh, great. This billing will be like summarising Proust, won’t it? Er… dancing sideways on with Anthony Quinn… not being Jesus in...
Reliable, lantern-jawed, mop-haired tradesman/yokel, facially halfway between Lance Percival and Vernon Kay, familiar to sitcom fans, and hence also sitcom film fans...
A shoo-in on the strength of his demented mirth in Asylum alone. Throw in such other roles as his sympathetic Rev Philip...
A trained mime, yet! Now, why didn’t we see any of that on screen? What we did get, however, was a veritable...
The standard breakdown goes with Honor: pre- and post-telly film roles. Before getting it together with the bowler hat, she notched up...
Stuffy old film lore has her pudding-proving moment down as her depressed ballerina to C Chaplin’s down and out comic in Limelight,...
Actor or novelist? Dandy or raconteur? The British Rock Hudson or John Sessions in a Panama hat? The public may never have...
Grandson Paul McCartney may have insisted he was ‘very clean’, but no-one ‘did’ shabby like Wilfrid B. Drunks, minor tradesmen, tinkers in...
Steve Bolsover makes a mad, passionate case case for Big Bern: ‘Yes, we know he can do the comedic stuff, but his...
She may have been Australian, but with an upper-class accent as affected as that tacked-on ‘e’, she personified cinematic horsey haughtiness for...
As luck would have it, Dora’s main line of work – never knowingly overscrubbed ladies from the wrong side of the dog...
Proof positive that, in many a film comedy, the nominally ‘straight’ man is often to be found giving a more assured comic...
Not one for our own personal Hall of Fame, but nominations came in from several friends of the Unusual Stain, including Steve...
Another graduate from music hall to period smoulder, as the less wicked of the assorted Gainsborough girls. She was the least screwed...
Short, middle-aged feisty eccentrics were the speciality of this Australian-born mockney lass, although she wasn’t limited to parts such as the doggedly...
For many years on celluloid, supercilliousness had a name, and it’s name was Patrick Cargill. The debonair, cravat-bound old rogue smirked his...
We can only presume that Carmichael’s celestial briar is fuming at the sought not to mention sound of the clodhopping ‘teen’ remake...
Well, we could just sit here listing titles, couldn’t we? Dr Zhivago, Billy Liar, Darling, Don’t Look Now… big time roles were...
Anyone who learns their trade off Alastair Sim is doing something right. It’s tempting to see George Cole’s as a career of...
We’re thinking of her pre-soap career here, of course. The Joan who played an assortment of cockney teenage tarts in various downmarket...
Ach, it’s a pain writing billings for the more well-known stars, as you’ll know everything already. (‘A milkman, you say? Well, never...
A Burmese lad, of course, but he’s welcome in this pantheon anytime. One of those careers of two halves we’ve been hearing...
Any enemy of Stanley Kubrick is a friend of ours. Any former star of Moon Zero Two, Vampire Circus and Quo Vadis...
Even where none was present on his noggin, the dogged, moustachioed and often terminally repressed characters in which James Cossins specialised always...
A giant among vampire killers. Endlessly professional, with just enough of a sense of humour creeping in under the floorboards, Cushing more...
The man who made Carry On swing! Sort of. Britain’s youngest professional stand-up, a hit parade star bridging the gap between Elvis...
Vladek Sheybal may have come over here from Eastern Europe for a career of Bloc-parts, but Essex-born Francis De Wolff had the...
Who new the young man who put the lifts in at Broadcasting House would go on to forge a formidable line in...
Rightly revered for his sonorous ‘Tomorrow’s New Yesterday’ radio voice, on screen Dyall started out during wartime playing stock Nazis in Colonel...
Forever enshrined by the kind of bottom-feeding dimwits who compile pub quizzes as ‘Her off of Goldfinger – end of!’ (Bonus cretin...
Siren of the 60s, former Miss Norway became the woman that, given the endless lewd mentions of her in The Goon Show,...
Beyond the snug and cosy realm of The Cad – roguishly superior, yes, but in the end loveably trivial – there is...
Being remembered only for Withnail & I is a brutal testament. PolPot might be more pleased with his legacy. But unfortunately for...
Useless at almost everything he did, or was purported to do – ‘photographer’ it often said on the card, though we’ve never...
It took Shirley a while to get up to full steam on the screen. Have a look at her performances in ’50s...
You want old-school upper crust sauce without the transatlantic taint of a Joan Collins? Fenella’s your girl! That husky voice was a...
If you’re going to set up your own production company, make it a punning one. And so Albert did, his Memorial Enterprises...
One of those actresses often described as having a ‘disappointing’ career, meaning that after her pre-adult film roles of increasing skill (culminating...
We’ll ignore that damn tonic water catchphrase (tempting though, isn’t it?) and celebrate the screen’s smoothest operator this side of Peter Bowles...
Not many film actors can say they have come to the sound stage from a position of pre-eminence in not only the...
Many fine film careers began with the smallest of parts in The Smallest Show on Earth, and Liz is no exception, rubbing...
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush”, “To Sir With Love”, “Prudence And The Pill”, “Percy’s Progress”, “Doomwatch”, “Dominique” (“will make you...
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