Sir Peter Ustinov

Sir Peter Ustinov , 1921-2004, English writer, director, and actor, b. London. A witty, charming, and cosmopolitan man, he debuted on the London stage at 18 and subsequently moved easily between English, French, and American film and theater. He wrote more than two dozen plays, among them Romanoff and Juliet (1956; film, 1960), The Unknown Soldier and His Wife (1967), and Who's Who in Hell (1974). His works of fiction include volumes of short stories, e.g., Add a Dash of Pity (1959), and such novels as The Loser (1960) and Krumnagel (1971). Ustinov appeared in a variety of films, including Quo Vadis (1951), Spartacus (1960; Academy Award), Billy Budd (1961), and Lady L (1966), the latter two of which he scripted and directed as well. His other films include Topkapi (1964; Academy Award) and Lorenzo's Oil (1992), and he also acted in his own plays. Beginning with Death on the Nile (1978), he played Agatha Christie 's detective Hercule Poirot in a number of theatrical and television films. Ustinov was the winner of three television Emmy awards and one Grammy for his recorded narration of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. He was knighted in 1990.

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Dear Me (1977); studies by T. Thomas (1971) and V. L. Stewart (1988).

Ustinov, Sir Peter Alexander (1921–2004), English actor, dramatist, and director, of Russian-French descent. Trained under Saint-Denis at the London Theatre Studio, he made his first appearance in London in 1939 with the Players' Theatre Late Joys in his own sketches, and his memorable impersonation of the ageing opera-singer Madame Liselotte Beethoven-Finck admirably displayed his great gift for mimicry. His first play Fishing for Shadows (1940), in which he himself appeared, was based on Sarment's Le Pêcheur d'ombres (1921), and was followed in quick succession by House of Regrets (1942), Blow Your Own Trumpet (1943), The Banbury Nose (1944), and The Tragedy of Good Intentions (1945). Ustinov returned to the London stage in 1946, after serving in the army, to play Petrovitch in an adaptation of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. His next play The Indifferent Shepherd (1948), about a clergyman who has problems with both his beliefs and his marriage, starred Gladys Cooper; in the same year he appeared in his adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's Hets (Frenzy). In 1949 he acted in Linklater's Love in Albania, after which he appeared only in his own plays for the next 30 years. His first popular success came with The Love of Four Colonels (1951; NY, 1953), a fantasy in which four officers from the occupying forces, American, British, French, and Russian, woo a Sleeping Beauty in a German castle; he played a leading role in it in London himself. After The Moment of Truth (also 1951) and No Sign of the Dove (1953) came another popular success, Romanoff and Juliet (1956; NY, 1957), in which he also appeared, about the romance between the son of the Russian ambassador and the daughter of the American ambassador in a Ruritanian country. His play Photo Finish (1962; NY, 1963) was memorable for his own performance as a bedridden 80-year-old confronted with himself at the ages of 20, 40, and 60. The comedy Halfway up the Tree (London and NY, 1967) provided a good role for Robert Morley in London. Ustinov then played the Archbishop in his own play The Unknown Soldier and His Wife (1968) at Chichester, repeating the role in London in 1973, in which year R Loves J, a musical based on Romanoff and Juliet for which he wrote the book, was also seen at Chichester. In 1979 he was seen at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival as King Lear; his first Shakespearian role, and in 1983 (NY, 1984) he played Ludwig in his own Beethoven's Tenth. He has also directed a number of plays, including several of his own, and is a notable film actor and opera director.