Entertainments National Service Association, Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, San Sebastin International Film Festival Award for Best Actor, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Peter Sellers on stage, radio, screen and record, San Sebastin International Film Festival, "Behind Inspector Clouseau; The funny, often elusive Peter Sellers and his wives", "Forgotten film of Goons restored by BFI", "The 29th Academy Awards (1957) Nominees and Winners", Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, "Movie Review Up the Creek Up the Creek' at 55th", "Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, The (1960)", "The 32nd Academy Awards (1960) Nominees and Winners", British Academy of Film and Television Arts, "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)", "The 22nd Annual Golden Globe Awards (1965)", "The 37th Academy Awards (1965) Nominees and Winners", "Tortured love letter Peter Sellers wrote to Britt Ekland weeks after whirlwind marriage", "Marley Is Dead, Killed in a Nuclear War", "A Day at the Beach" was worth digging up", "The 22nd Annual Golden Globe Awards (1976)", "The 23rd Annual Golden Globe Awards (1977)", National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, "The 37th Annual Golden Globe Awards (1980)", "The 52nd Academy Awards (1980) Nominees and Winners", "Peter Sellers 'changed his will on the day he died', legal papers show", "Profile: Movie on HBO examines the life of Peter Sellers", "John Cleese on The Goon Show, His Earliest Comedy Influence", "Firezine #4: Under the Influence of the Goons", "I owe film fame to dad's Scouse sense of humour", "Will Ferrell interview: Megamind, Anchorman and playing a villain", "Eddie Murphy: I'll retire from films at 50", "The 5 Greatest Comedies of All-Time, According To Chris Rock", "Robin Williams, Parkinson interview 2002", "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers: The monster who made us laugh", Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actor, National Board of Review Award for Best Actor, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Sellers&oldid=1140062486, Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners, Commanders of the Order of the British Empire, English people of Portuguese-Jewish descent, Royal Air Force personnel of World War II, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the ODNB, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, TCMDb name template using numeric ID from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Won Tehran Film Festival Award for Best Actor, This page was last edited on 18 February 2023, at 06:44. [2][85] The role earned him a BAFTA, and the critic for The Manchester Guardian believed it was Sellers's best screen performance to date. Although the bulk of his work was comedic, often parodying characters of authority such as military officers or policemen, he also performed in other film genres and roles. Peter Sellers Britt Eklund during happier times, circa 1964. m] ( listen); born Elke Baronin von Schletz, 5 November 1940) is a German actress. [111] Sellers was apprehensive about accepting the role, doubting his ability to successfully portray the part of a flamboyant American television playwright who was according to Sellers "a fantastic nightmare, part homosexual, part drug addict, part sadist". $7.33 + $9.65 shipping. [248] Additionally, Sellers was nominated for the Best Actor award at the 52nd Academy Awards[249] and the Best Actor in a Leading Role award at the 34th British Academy Film Awards. [28] He found these duties dull, so auditioned for Squadron Leader Ralph Reader's RAF Gang Show entertainment troupe: Reader accepted him and Sellers toured the UK before the troupe was transferred to India. I won't tell you what I think of you. Sellers began his film career during the 1950s. After the first day's shooting, Sellers sprained his ankle while leaving a restaurant and could no longer work in the cramped cockpit set. [169] They moved to Rome in May to film After the Fox, an Anglo-Italian production in which they were both to appear. $10.00 + $4.99 shipping. "[228] Sellers's performance earned him a further nomination at the 34th Golden Globe Awards.[229]. "[236] He would make similar references throughout his life: when he appeared on The Muppet Show in 1978, a guest appearance that earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actor in Variety or Music,[237] he chose not to appear as himself, instead appearing in a variety of costumes and accents. [277], After his death, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer tried to continue with Romance of the Pink Panther and offered the role of Clouseau to Dudley Moore, who turned it down. ", Sellers on studying Sir Alec Guinness during filming The Ladykillers. [99] The songs were included on an album released by the couple, Peter & Sophia, which reached number five in the UK Albums Chart. [67] Following this, Sellers provided the growling voice of Winston Churchill to the BAFTA award-winning film The Man Who Never Was. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper. Sellers portrayed Sir Guy Grand, an eccentric billionaire who plays elaborate practical jokes on people. "[234] He refused to seek professional help for his mental issues. "[94] Sellers and Loren developed a close relationship during filming, culminating in Sellers declaring his love for her in front of his wife. "Manchu" will take its rightful place alongside such colossally ill-advised washouts as Tell Me Where It Hurts, The Bobo and The Prisoner of Zenda". An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. For the New Zealand sports broadcaster, see, "Period of indifference": two marriages, three, The meaning of the acronym KOGVOS was flexible: it has also been defined as "King of Goons and Voice of Sanity". Born in Southsea, Portsmouth, Sellers made his stage debut at the Kings Theatre, Southsea, when he was two weeks old. [11] Despite Sellers's deep personal problems, The Pink Panther Strikes Again was well received critically. (1965), Casino Royale (1967), The Party (1968), Being There (1979) and five films of the Pink Panther series (19631978). He won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role twice, for I'm All Right Jack and for the original Pink Panther film, The Pink Panther (1963) and was nominated as Best Actor three times. Elke Sommer's Age, Height, and Weight Elke Sommer has a height of 5 feet 6 inches and a weight of about 56 kg. He was the complete contradiction. [65] In 1957 film producer Michael Relph, impressed with Sellers's portrayal of an elderly character in Idiot Weekly, cast the 32-year-old actor as a 68-year-old projectionist in Basil Dearden's The Smallest Show on Earth, supporting Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna and Margaret Rutherford. On the following pages, you have the chance to read a detailed biography and browse through a myriad of personal information. [267], Author Aaron Sultanik observed that in Sellers's early films, such as I'm All Right Jack, he displays "deft, technical interpretations [that] pinpoint the mechanical nature of his comic characterization", which "reduces each of his characters to a series of gross, awkward tics". [266], Following Sellers's death, fellow actor Richard Attenborough said that Sellers "had the genius comparable to Chaplin",[267] while the Boulting brothers considered Sellers as "a man of enormous gifts; and these gifts he gave to the world. A playboy who refuses to give up his hedonistic lifestyle to settle down and marry his true love seeks help from a demented psychoanalyst who is having romantic problems of his own. You cant possibly go back to filming., When asked in the documentary if she was actually sick, Ekland responded, Of course not., I was 21 years old, fit as a fiddle, but I had no choice, she said. But the marriage wasnt a fairy tale. [32] He was posted back to England shortly afterwards to work at the Air Ministry,[33] and demobilised later that year. Elke Sommers has not been dating anyone as of May 2022. "[313], The stage play Being Sellers premiered in Australia in 1998, three years after the release of the biography by Roger Lewis, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. [274], Although Sellers was reportedly in the process of excluding Frederick from his will a week before he died,[275] she inherited almost his entire estate worth an estimated 4.5 million (20.5 million in 2021 pounds)[125] while his children received 800 each[275] (3,649 in 2021 pounds). Sellers' Clouseau, a fellow who, when he attempts to tear off his clothes in the heat of passion, gets tangled up in his necktie, and who, when he masqueradesfor reasons never gone intoas Quasimodo, overinflates his hump with helium. [36], Sellers wrote to the BBC in 1948, and was subsequently auditioned. As a result, he made his television debut on 18 March 1948 in New To You. Elke has been married to hotelier Wolf Walther since 1993. She is married to the love of her life, by now-retired hotel manager Wolf Walther, and together with her husband she lives her love for animals, sports, and Mother Nature. This prompted Sellers to throw both children out, saying that he never wanted to see them again. [235] Sellers would claim that he had no personality and was almost unnoticeable, which meant that he "needed a strongly defined character to play. He just went on and on, she said. He portrayed three roles, including King Rudolf IV and King Rudolf Vrulers of the fictional small nation of Ruritaniaand Syd Frewin, Rudolf V's half-brother. [197], After a cameo appearance in A Day at the Beach (1970),[198] and a serious role later in 1970 as an aging businessman who seduces Sinad Cusack in Hoffman,[199] Sellers starred in Roy Boulting's There's a Girl in My Soup opposite Goldie Hawn. [82] Sellers's last film of the fifties was The Battle of the Sexes; a comedy directed by Charles Crichton. [150] Sellers found the part and the director, Anatole Litvak, uninspiring; the producers brought in Blake Edwards to replace Litvak. BUY 2, GET 1 FREE (add 3 to cart) See all eligible items and terms. [288] Academic Cynthia Baron observed that Sellers's external characterisations led to doubt with reviewers as to whether Sellers's work was "true" acting. I thought that I would like to meet what I saw, said Sellers in the documentarys archive footage. [168], On 20 January 1965, Sellers and Ekland announced the birth of a daughter, Victoria. [92], In 1960 Sellers portrayed an Indian doctor, Dr Ahmed el Kabir, in Anthony Asquith's romantic comedy The Millionairess, a film based on a George Bernard Shaw play of the same name. The first Goon Show[43] was broadcast on 28 May 1951. Sellers was married four times and had three children from his first two marriages. [93] When asked about Loren, he explained to reporters, "I don't normally act with romantic, glamorous women She's a lot different from Harry Secombe. [195] The film, a satire on human nature,[196] was in general viewed negatively by critics. [108][109] Stanley Kubrick asked Sellers to play the role of Clare Quilty in the 1962 film Lolita, opposite James Mason and Shelley Winters. [244] Sellers's performance was universally lauded by critics and is considered by critic Danny Smith to be the "crowning triumph of Peter Sellers's remarkable career". [35] Sellers also continued his drumming and was billed on his appearance at The Hippodrome in Aldershot as "Britain's answer to Gene Krupa". The instrument greatly suited Sellers's temperament and artistic skills. A Shot in the Dark (1964) was directed by Blake Edwards and stars Peter Sellers, Elke Sommer, George Sanders, Herbert Lom and Burt Kwouk. [185] During his next film, The Bobo, which again co-starred Ekland, the couple's marital problems worsened. Her maiden name was Anne Howe, while her professional name was Anne Hayes. [210], In April 1972, Sellers reunited with Milligan and Harry Secombe to record The Last Goon Show of All, which was broadcast on 5 October. He played three distinct leading roles: the elderly Grand Duchess, the ambitious Prime Minister and the innocent and clumsy farm boy selected to lead an invasion of the United States. It's as if filmgoers are kept one fall ahead of him. The scene, once again, was a glamorous hotel. They mother you, they're great in bed, they're like a sister, they're there when you want to see them, they're not there when you don't. He died from a heart attack, aged 54, in 1980. [218] In 1974, Sellers again claimed to have communicated with the long-dead music hall comic Dan Leno, who advised him to return to the role of Clouseau. 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