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Peter Sellers

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Richard Henry Sellers, better known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian, talented comic actor and member of the The Goon Show (a long-running BBC radio show - 1951-1960). Born September 8, 1925 in Southsea, Hampshire, England, in a family of vaudeville entertainers, Sellers died of a heart attack on July 24 1980 in London, England.

Probably following his family in the vaudeville circuit, Sellers learnt this popular yet difficult art and the immediate instinct of the "gag." He was an incredibly versatile artist; he was an excellent dancer, a skillful player of the ukulele and banjo and good enough on drums to tour with several jazz bands.

Sellers is most famous for his role as the bungling Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies, which granted him a really wide audience.

But he played other, more challenging roles, including the triple role consisting of Dr. Strangelove, the president of United States, and an officer of RAF (the first two appearing in the same room throughout the film) in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, easily varying from brilliant themes as in Hollywood Party, to more intense performances as in Lolita (from Vladimir Nabokov's notorious masterpiece). A late masterpiece for Sellers was the film Being There

Commonly considered a master actor, sometimes described as an "obsessive perfectionist", Sellers found in Blake Edwards a devoted director who could delicately underline and follow his comic rhythms; Edwards defined Sellers as a "mercurial clown" who could turn comedy into drama, and vice-versa, in an instant.

Other directors Sellers played for include above mentioned Kubrick, Roman Polanski, Paul Mazursky, Billy Wilder. He played with many stars, among them Shirley MacLaine, Sophia Loren, Maggie Smith, Goldie Hawn, Shelley Winters, Elke Sommer, Claudine Longet, and even Ringo Starr (The Beatles' drummer.) Sellers' early career included radio and television work.

Sellers was married four times. His first marriage was to the Swedish actress Britt Ekland.

Sellers had explicitly requested that Glenn Miller's song In The Mood be played for his funeral; it is considered his last touch of humour, since he deeply hated that tune.

Films:

In some of above titles, Sellers appears only by his voice