118 Facts About Peter Sellers

Peter Sellers first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show, featured on a number of hit comic songs and became known to a worldwide audience through his many film roles, among them Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series.

Peter Sellers began accompanying his parents in a variety act that toured the provincial theatres.

Peter Sellers first worked as a drummer and toured around England as a member of the Entertainments National Service Association.

Peter Sellers developed his mimicry and improvisational skills during a spell in Ralph Reader's wartime Gang Show entertainment troupe, which toured Britain and the Far East.

Peter Sellers's versatility enabled him to portray a wide range of comic characters using different accents and guises, and he would often assume multiple roles within the same film, frequently with contrasting temperaments and styles.

Peter Sellers 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 and was nominated as Best Actor three times.

Peter Sellers's behaviour was often erratic and compulsive, and he frequently clashed with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst.

Peter Sellers was married four times and had three children from his first two marriages.

Peter Sellers died from a heart attack, aged 54, in 1980.

Peter Sellers was born on 8 September 1925, in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth.

Peter Sellers's parents were Yorkshire-born William "Bill" Sellers and Agnes Doreen "Peg".

Peg Peter Sellers was related to the pugilist Daniel Mendoza, whom Peter Sellers greatly revered, and whose engraving later hung in his office.

At one time Peter Sellers planned to use Mendoza's image for his production company's logo.

Peter Sellers maintained a very close relationship with his mother, which his friend Spike Milligan later considered unhealthy for a grown man.

Sellers's agent, Dennis Selinger, recalled his first meeting with Peg and Peter Sellers, noting that "Sellers was an immensely shy young man, inclined to be dominated by his mother, but without resentment or objection".

In 1935 the Peter Sellers family moved to North London and settled in Muswell Hill.

Peter Sellers became a top student at the school, excelling in drawing in particular.

Peter Sellers was prone to laziness, but his natural talents shielded him from criticism by his teachers.

Peter Sellers's father doubted Sellers's abilities in the entertainment field, even suggesting that his son's talents were only enough to become a road sweeper, while Sellers's mother encouraged him continuously.

Peter Sellers was steadily promoted, becoming a box office clerk, usher, assistant stage manager and lighting operator.

Peter Sellers became close friends with Derek Altman, and together they launched Sellers's first stage act under the name "Altman and Sellers", consisting of playing ukuleles, singing, and telling jokes.

Spike Milligan later noted that Peter Sellers was very proficient on the drums and might have remained a jazz drummer, had he lacked his skills in mimicry and improvisation.

Peter Sellers became a member of the Entertainments National Service Association, which provided entertainment for British forces and factory workers during the war.

Peter Sellers performed comedy routines at these concerts, including impersonations of George Formby, with Peter Sellers accompanying his own singing on ukulele.

Peter Sellers wanted to become a pilot, but his poor eyesight restricted him to ground staff duties.

Peter Sellers 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.

Peter Sellers served in Germany and France after the war.

In 1946, Peter Sellers made his final show with ENSA starring in the pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk at the Theatre Marigny in Paris.

Peter Sellers was posted back to England shortly afterwards to work at the Air Ministry, and demobilised later that year.

On resuming his theatrical career, Peter Sellers could get only sporadic work.

Peter Sellers was fired after one performance of a comedy routine in Peterborough; the headline act, Welsh vocalist Dorothy Squires persuaded the management to reinstate him.

Peter Sellers continued his drumming and was billed on his appearance at The Hippodrome in Aldershot as "Britain's answer to Gene Krupa".

In March 1948 Peter Sellers gained a six-week run at the Windmill Theatre in London, which predominantly staged revue acts: he provided the comedy turns in between the nude shows on offer.

Peter Sellers wrote to the BBC in 1948, and was auditioned.

Peter Sellers's act, largely based on impressions, was well received, and he returned the following week.

Frustrated with the slow pace of his career, Peter Sellers telephoned BBC radio producer Roy Speer, pretending to be Kenneth Horne, star of the radio show Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh.

In October 1948, Peter Sellers was a regular radio performer, appearing in Starlight Hour, The Gang Show, Henry Hall's Guest Night and It's Fine To Be Young.

In 1949, Peter Sellers started to date Anne Howe, an Australian actress who lived in London.

Peter Sellers proposed to her in April 1950 and the couple were married in London on 15 September 1951; their son, Michael, was born on 2 April 1954, and their daughter, Sarah, followed in 1958.

Peter Sellers continued to work with Bentine, Milligan, and Secombe.

Peter Sellers appeared in The Goons until the last programme of the ten-series run, broadcast on 28 January 1960.

In 1954, Peter Sellers was cast opposite Sid James, Tony Hancock, Raymond Huntley, Donald Pleasence and Eric Sykes in the British Lion Film Corporation comedy production, Orders Are Orders.

Peter Sellers pursued a film career and took a number of small roles such as a police officer in John and Julie.

Peter Sellers accepted a larger part in the 1955 Alexander Mackendrick-directed Ealing comedy The Ladykillers in which he starred opposite his idol Alec Guinness, in addition to Herbert Lom and Cecil Parker.

Sellers portrayed Harry Robinson, the Teddy Boy; biographer Peter Evans considers this Sellers's first good role.

Later in 1957 Peter Sellers portrayed a television star with a talent for disguises in Mario Zampi's offbeat black comedy The Naked Truth, opposite Terry-Thomas, Peggy Mount, Shirley Eaton and Dennis Price.

Peter Sellers was a member of the Grand Order of Water Rats, the same exclusive theatrical fraternity founded by Leno in 1890.

In 1958 Peter Sellers starred with David Tomlinson, Wilfrid Hyde-White, David Lodge and Lionel Jeffries as a chief petty officer in Val Guest's Up the Creek.

In preparation for his role as Fred Kite, Peter Sellers watched footage of union officials.

Peter Sellers 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.

In 1960, Peter 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.

Peter Sellers was not interested in the role until he learned that Sophia Loren would be his co-star.

In 1961, Peter Sellers made his directorial debut with Mr Topaze, in which he starred.

Peter Sellers portrayed an ex-schoolmaster in a small French town who turns to a life of crime to obtain wealth.

Peter Sellers was nominated for the Best British Actor award at the 16th British Academy Film Awards for his role as John Lewis, a frustrated Welsh librarian whose affections swing between the glamorous Liz and his long-suffering wife Jean.

In 1962, Peter Sellers played a retired British army general in John Guillermin's Waltz of the Toreadors, based on the play of the same name.

However, Peter Sellers won the San Sebastian International Film Festival Award for Best Actor and a BAFTA award nomination for his performance, and it was well received by the critics.

Peter 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 Peter Sellers "a fantastic nightmare, part homosexual, part drug addict, part sadist".

Kubrick encouraged Peter Sellers to improvise and stated that he often reached a "state of comic ecstasy".

Kubrick had American jazz producer Norman Granz record portions of the script for Peter Sellers to listen to, so he could study the voice and develop confidence, granting Peter Sellers a free artistic licence.

Peter Sellers later claimed that his relationship with Kubrick became one of the most rewarding of his career.

Towards the end of 1962, Peter Sellers appeared in The Dock Brief, a legal satire directed by James Hill and co-starring Richard Attenborough.

The Pink Panther was released in the UK in January 1964 and received a mixed reception from the critics, although Penelope Gilliatt, writing in The Observer, remarked that Peter Sellers had a "flawless sense of mistiming" in a performance that was "one of the most delicate studies in accident-proneness since the silents".

In 1963, Stanley Kubrick cast Sellers to appear in Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb alongside George C Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn and Slim Pickens.

Peter Sellers was initially hesitant about taking on these divergent characters, but Kubrick prevailed.

Kubrick later commented that the idea of having Sellers in so many of the film's key roles was that "everywhere you turn there is some version of Peter Sellers holding the fate of the world in his hands".

Peter Sellers was especially anxious about successfully enacting the role of Kong and accurately affecting a Texan accent.

Peter Sellers played Muffley as a bland, placid intellectual in the mould of Adlai Stevenson; he played Mandrake as an unflappable Englishman; and Dr Strangelove, a character influenced by pre-war German cinema, as a wheelchair-using fanatic.

Between November 1963 and February 1964, Peter Sellers began filming A Shot in the Dark, an adaptation of a French play, L'Idiote by Marcel Achard.

Peter Sellers found the part and the director, Anatole Litvak, uninspiring; the producers brought in Blake Edwards to replace Litvak.

Peter Sellers's personality was described by others as difficult and demanding, and he often clashed with fellow actors and directors.

Towards the end of filming, in early February 1964, Peter Sellers met Britt Ekland, a Swedish actress who had arrived in London to film Guns at Batasi.

Peter Sellers soon showed signs of insecurity and paranoia; he would become highly anxious and jealous, for example, when Ekland starred opposite attractive men.

Shortly after the wedding, Peter Sellers started filming on location in Twentynine Palms, California for Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid, opposite Dean Martin and Kim Novak.

The relationship between Wilder and Peter Sellers became strained; both had different approaches to work and often clashed as a result.

Peter Sellers's illness forced him to withdraw from the filming of Kiss Me, Stupid and he was replaced by Ray Walston.

The film was directed by Vittorio De Sica, whose English Peter Sellers struggled to understand.

Peter Sellers attempted to have De Sica fired, causing tensions on the set.

Peter Sellers became unhappy with his wife's performance, straining their relationship and triggering open arguments during one of which Peter Sellers threw a chair at Ekland.

Shortly after leaving Casino Royale, Peter Sellers was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in honour of his career achievements.

Three weeks into production in Italy, Peter Sellers told director Robert Parrish to fire his wife, saying "I'm not coming back after lunch if that bitch is on the set".

Peter Sellers died within days, without Sellers having seen her.

Peter Sellers was deeply affected by her death and remorseful at not having returned to London to see her.

Peter Sellers's first film appearance of 1968 was a reunion with Blake Edwards for the fish-out-of-water comedy The Party, in which he starred alongside Claudine Longet and Denny Miller.

Peter Sellers appears as Hrundi V Bakshi, a bungling Indian actor who accidentally receives an invitation to a lavish Hollywood dinner party.

Peter Sellers's character, according to Sellers's biographer Peter Evans, was "clearly an amalgam of Clouseau and the doctor in The Millionairess".

Peter Sellers followed it later that year with Hy Averback's I Love You, Alice B Toklas, playing an attorney who abandons his lifestyle to become a hippie.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars, remarking that Peter Sellers was "back doing what he does best", although he said that in Peter Sellers's previous films he had "been at his worst recently".

In 1969 Peter Sellers starred opposite Ringo Starr in the Joseph McGrath-directed film The Magic Christian.

Peter Sellers portrayed Sir Guy Grand, an eccentric billionaire who plays elaborate practical jokes on people.

The critic Irv Slifkin remarked that the film was a reflection of the cynicism of Peter Sellers, describing the film as a "proto-Pythonesque adaption of Terry Southern's semi-free-form short novel", and "one of the strangest films to be shown at a gala premiere for Britain's royal family".

Andrew Spicer, writing for the British Film Institute's Screenonline, considers that although Peter Sellers favoured playing romantic roles, he "was always more successful in parts that sent up his own vanities and pretensions, as with the TV presenter and narcissistic lothario" he played in There's a Girl in My Soup.

In May 1973, with his third marriage failing, Peter Sellers went to the theatre to watch Liza Minnelli perform.

Peter Sellers became entranced with Minnelli and the couple became engaged three days later, despite Minnelli's current betrothal to Desi Arnaz Jr.

In 1974, Peter 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.

In 1974, Peter Sellers portrayed a "sexually voracious" Queen Victoria in Joseph McGrath's comedic biographical film of the Scottish poet William McGonagall, The Great McGonagall, starring opposite Milligan and Julia Foster.

Biographer Michael Starr asserts that Peter Sellers showed enthusiasm towards these roles, although the airline campaign failed commercially.

Peter Sellers's behaviour was regarded as unprofessional and childish, and he frequently threw tantrums, often threatening to abandon projects.

In March 1976, Peter Sellers began dating actress Lynne Frederick, whom he married on 18 February 1977.

In 1979, Peter Sellers starred alongside Lynne Frederick, Lionel Jeffries and Elke Sommer in Richard Quine's The Prisoner of Zenda.

However, Philip French, for The Observer, was unimpressed by the film, describing it as "a mess of porridge" and stating that "Peter Sellers reveals that he cannot draw the line between the sincere and the sentimental".

Later in 1979, Peter Sellers starred opposite Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas and Jack Warden in the black comedy Being There as Chance, a simple-minded gardener addicted to watching TV who is regarded as a sage by the rich and powerful.

Peter Sellers considered Chance's walking and voice the character's most important attributes, and in preparing for the role worked alone with a tape recorder or with his wife, and then with Ashby, to perfect the clear enunciation and flat delivery needed to reveal "the childlike mind behind the words".

Peter Sellers described his experience of working on the film as "so humbling, so powerful", and co-star Shirley MacLaine found Peter Sellers "a dream" to work with.

Additionally, Peter Sellers was nominated for the Best Actor award at the 52nd Academy Awards and the Best Actor in a Leading Role award at the 34th British Academy Film Awards.

Peter Sellers threw his drink over me and told me to get the next plane home.

Peter Sellers expressed dissatisfaction with his own portrayal of Manchu with his ill-health often causing delays.

Four adverts were scheduled, but only three were filmed as Peter Sellers collapsed in Dublin, again with heart problems.

Peter Sellers was again ill in Cannes, returning to his residence in Gstaad to work on the script for his next project, Romance of the Pink Panther.

Peter Sellers had recently started to rebuild his relationship with his son Michael after the failure of the latter's marriage.

On 21 July 1980, Peter Sellers arrived in London from Geneva.

Peter Sellers checked into the Dorchester hotel, before visiting Golders Green Crematorium for the first time to see the location of his parents' ashes.

Peter Sellers was taken to the Middlesex Hospital, London, and died just after midnight on 24 July 1980, aged 54.

Richard Attenborough thought that because of his sympathy, Peter Sellers could "inject into his characterisations the frailty and substance of a human being".

Writer and playwright John Mortimer saw the process for himself when Peter Sellers was about to undertake filming on Mortimer's The Dock Brief and could not decide how to play the character of the barrister.

Irv Slifkin said that the most prominent albeit ever-changing face in comedies of the 1960s was Peter Sellers who "changed like a chameleon throughout the era, dazzling audiences".

Sellers and the Goons were an influence on Peter Cook, who described Sellers as "the best comic actor in the world".

British actor Stephen Mangan stated that Peter Sellers was a large influence, as did the comedians Mike Myers, Alan Carr and Rob Brydon.