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...
Again, with your kind permission we’ll respectfully agree to knock that role on the head for our purposes and delve into the...
We’ll pause for thirty seconds here to get the words ‘eyebrow’ and ‘creaky’ out of the way. Say what you like about...
Blustering, mincing, nincompooperising, looking askance down the nose (if that’s possible)… No-one said a character actor had to choose likeable parts, and...
If Margaret Rutherford was the female equivalent of a galleon in full sail, Peggy Mount was the Bismarck. In the films she...
The hinterland of the sex comedy may have meant that superbly lunatic Charles Murray’s film career will never be pondered by wonks...
Plain old Marjorie Robertson to the Home Office of course, but as half of the Wilcox-Neagle dream team, she dominated British cinema...
Very possibly the only bounder to make it to full National Treasure status (though Nigel Havers – who funnily enough played Niven...
Walking the tightrope of self-parody for as long as we can remember (which is probably longer than he can remember), yet with...
From the off, she was pretty much the embodiment of the all-new, empowered yet still slightly floaty post-’60s middle class lady with...
There can be few people left on Earth who don’t know the gentleman’s gentleman came from a working class London family, but...
Well, we won’t try and be clever here and claim she was actually a gifted musical comedienne or something. No, Ingrid Pitt...
Positioned firmly at the opposite end of the optical scale from Madeline Smith, Don was similarly wedded to the horror genre from...
She didn’t just go straight from being the daughter of a Kiwi butcher to The Forsyte Saga, you know. She had a...
Early bit parts in assorted Butcher’s tripe and playing a headachey wimp in The Italian Job might rank among the least auspicious...
No-one really knew quite what to do with Dennis Price, did they? The poshly sardonic one never fitted in at the House...
If an Australian film doesn’t have Bud Tingwell in it, it could at least have the grace to include the other prop...
Our favourite member of the all-conquering Redgrave dynasty. Despite being born into the very top of the acting aristocracy, Lynn never quite...
Difficult to imagine Sir Michael leaping about on a chat show sofa at the height of his fame, but then in those...
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...
‘The clergy’s loss was the stage’s gain!’ ‘Which one was he, again?’ Ah, to be a Grand Old Man of the stage...
A quick glance down the roles he played from 1936 to 1991 indicate that while never in top billing, indeed rarely in...
Never mind the muted trumpet-themed sitcom years, the early ’60s saw Anton turn out a slew of capable turns (though admittedly seldom...
Earmarked for on-screen military service having come to the cinema via The Army Game, the generously-chinned Liverpudlian nevertheless amassed a varied career...
Len’s sitcom trait – admittedly a technically brilliant and very funny one – of talking at 200 miles per hour, often seeming...
Getting a bit arty here – Jenny’s done Antonioni, Cassavettes, Pasolini, Jarman, she was in the infamous Alternative Miss World beauty-contest-cum-art-‘happening’, and...
The word here, of course, is ‘formidable’. Formidable like the gangster’s moll in Margs’ first ever film role, whacking a copper with...
Pre-Medford, there’s a reliable seam of ‘local bobby’ roles racked up by the former Owen John, exhibiting, according to Mike Davis, ‘a...
Okay, so there are two contenders for the crown of greatest ever film star if we whittle it down to a straight...
Bless little Cyril, he was hardly out of a labcoat in films long enough to get any other sort of part. Or...
As Madeline Smith was to ’70s British horror, so Barbara Shelley was to ’50s and ’60s Brit horror and sci-fi, times ten....
Jenny Hanley’s mum. Started in small, unglamorous roles, possibly the least gitzy of which was as George Formby’s cleaning lady. Paul Temple....
The lugubrious-visaged Polish émigré left Andrez Wajda and pals behind to make a fine living being sinister in British and American films....
Actual proper genius runs anyone whose name might be raised as a contender for best film star of all time – fact!...
Refused entry to RADA, Essex girl Joan made a career out of character parts which celebrated the unvarnished, free-of-airs-and-graces side of life....
A theme of unfair stereotyping runs through this list, for which we make no apologies. We know Madeline Smith is an actress...
From a theatre perspective (darling) a career of untold promise cut short in the 1960s by a descent into alcoholism that ruined...
This little exercise is all about exploring the folk who populate lower ends of the bill as much the stars, and Marianne...
‘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...
We don’t know exactly what that hyphen was all about (real name: Thomas Terry Hoar-Stevens), though the man himself joked it was...
Let’s be perfectly blunt here; if a film doesn’t have Bud Tingwell in it, then it isn’t a proper Australian film. Even...
It can’t have done an actor’s self esteem much good to be classed as a salaryman. Richard Todd was on the Rank...
Hard to believe she started off on celluloid as the ‘if wet’ Audrey Hepburn, after the latter’s ‘people’ baulked at the rum...
Even the staunchest class warrior must feel that the old school patrician elite can’t have been all bad if there was a...
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...
Always barking away somewhere in Pinewoodland. Son of music hall legend Nosmo King, Watson was indicted into showbiz at an early age,...
Devotees of the legitimate stage can’t picture Ms Whitelaw without an attendant pile of mud and crap covering her lower half, but...
Picked out of the crowd to replace a co-star in, er, A Girl in the Crowd – possibly the least believable showbiz...
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...
You don’t argue with Superman’s mum of course, but if there was ever an odder CV among these nominees we’d like to...
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