The Life and Death of Peter Sellers
Encyclopedia
The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a 2004 film
2004 in film
The year 2004 in film involved some significant events. Major releases of sequels took place. It included blockbuster films like Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Passion of the Christ, Meet the Fockers, Blade: Trinity, Spider-Man 2, Alien vs. Predator, Kill Bill Vol...

 about the life of English comic actor Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...

, based on Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis , a former Fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University, is the biographer of Anthony Burgess. Lewis's book, Anthony Burgess: A Life, was published in 2002....

' book of the same name. It was directed by Stephen Hopkins
Stephen Hopkins (director)
Stephen Hopkins is a Jamaican-born film director and producer. He is best-known for his continuation of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and the Predator franchise with Predator 2...

 and starred Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting , three British Academy Film Awards , two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen...

 as Sellers, Miriam Margolyes
Miriam Margolyes
Miriam Margolyes, OBE is an English actress and voice artist. Her earliest roles were in theatre and after several supporting roles in film and television she won a BAFTA Award for her role in The Age of Innocence .-Early life:...

 as his mother Peg Sellers, Emily Watson
Emily Watson
Emily Watson is an English actress. She gave an acclaimed debut film performance in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves.- Early life :...

 as his first wife Anne Howe, Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron is a South African actress, film producer and former fashion model.She rose to fame in the late 1990s following her roles in 2 Days in the Valley, Mighty Joe Young, The Devil's Advocate and The Cider House Rules...

 as his second wife Britt Ekland
Britt Ekland
Britt-Marie Ekland is a Swedish actress and singer, and a long time resident of the United Kingdom. She is best known for her roles as a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun, and in the British cult horror film The Wicker Man, as well as her marriage to actor Peter Sellers, and her...

, John Lithgow
John Lithgow
John Arthur Lithgow is an American actor, musician, and author. Presently, he is involved with a wide range of media projects, including stage, television, film, and radio...

 as Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...

, Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

 as Maurice Woodruff
Maurice Woodruff
Maurice Woodruff was an English clairvoyant and astrologer, born and raised in London. He achieved considerable fame both in his native England and internationally due to the perceived accuracy of his predictions. He presented his predictions to the public via newspapers and also via stage,...

 and Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci is an American actor, writer, film producer and film director. He has been nominated for several notable film awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his performance in The Lovely Bones...

 as Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

.

Synopsis

The film shows Peter Sellers as a complex and tormented genius, whose success as a film star concealed his difficult and relatively unhappy private life. This "troubled life" is the primary focus of this biopic, which personalizes "one of the greatest comic actors in the history of the British cinema," and shows the many masks he wore and characters he played as an actor.

The film makes clear that much of his success and identity were dependent initially on his domineering and doting mother. But eventually this success, first in radio and eventually in film, led to his succumbing to destructive mood swings and insecurity, and contributed to the deterioration of his marriages. Discovering his gift for comedy, his ego began to undermine his personal relationships with friends and co-workers. His personality became more turbulent. His own personality often merged with that of his film characters, and his self-learned skill as a "method actor
Method Actor
Method Actor is an eponymous album released in 1988 featuring American singer Eva Cassidy. It was re-released on CD in 2002, six years after her death.- Track listing :# "Getting Out" – 4:19# "Look in to My Eyes" – 4:16...

" was used to mask his real self.

The role of Sellers was acted by Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting , three British Academy Film Awards , two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen...

, "who approached the role with the enthusiasm of a hungry child in a candy store," notes a reviewer. Rush impersonates most of the important characters that Sellers played in his film career. Director Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...

 is played by John Lithgow
John Lithgow
John Arthur Lithgow is an American actor, musician, and author. Presently, he is involved with a wide range of media projects, including stage, television, film, and radio...

, and the film exposes some of the behind-the-scenes personality conflicts between Sellers and Edwards, which contributed to their unhappy and tumultuous working relationship, despite the success of their films. In the interview for the film, included on the DVD, Edwards credited Rush with portraying Sellers' characters with uncanny similarity to the real Peter Sellers, and claimed, in 2004, that it was the best acting he'd ever seen Rush perform.

Some reviewers have stressed that in order to appreciate and understand much of the Sellers story and his iconic status, they should have seen some of his leading works, including his Pink Panther roles directed by Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...

, and his roles in both Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

's Dr. Strangelove and Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby was an American film director and film editor.-Birth and early years:Born William Hal Ashby in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household and had a tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family which included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide and his...

's Being There
Being There
Being There is a 1979 American comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby. Adapted from the 1971 novella written by Jerzy Kosinski, the screenplay was coauthored by Kosinski and Robert C. Jones. The film stars Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard A...

. The latter film is considered by critics to be the "crowning triumph of Peter Sellers's remarkable career,", and in a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 interview in 1971, Sellers himself said that more than anything else, he wanted to play the role of Chance. Being There (which earned him an Oscar nomination) is shown to be the one film about which Sellers was truly passionate since it gave him an opportunity to display his skills as an actor, not just as a comedian (it is also suggested that he identified strongly with the main character).

The Pink Panther films are only a small part of this docudram
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....

edy, however, as it spans Sellers' career from The Goon Show
The Goon Show
The Goon Show was a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme...

 through Being There
Being There
Being There is a 1979 American comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby. Adapted from the 1971 novella written by Jerzy Kosinski, the screenplay was coauthored by Kosinski and Robert C. Jones. The film stars Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard A...

. Sellers is also shown aspiring to be a leading man in the James Bond satire Casino Royale
Casino Royale (1967 film)
Casino Royale is a 1967 comedy spy film originally produced by Columbia Pictures starring an ensemble cast of directors and actors. It is set as a satire of the James Bond film series and the spy genre, and is loosely based on Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel.The film stars David Niven as the...

 which prompts ridicule from the film's crew.

Production

Actor Geoffrey Rush stated in interviews that the film was itself structured to be reminiscent of a Peter Sellers film. However, it was darker than Sellers' actual films since it depicted Sellers' troubled experiences in his life (including his tantrums and mental instability). This included at various times Rush (as Sellers) dressing up to play other characters in his life (several were ultimately edited out, but are included within the special features on the DVD). In these instances he broke the fourth wall
Fourth wall
The fourth wall is the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play...

 to give a monologue to the audience.

Roger Lewis: "It was the melancholia
Melancholia
Melancholia , also lugubriousness, from the Latin lugere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, , in contemporary usage, is a mood disorder of non-specific depression,...

 of Sellers I was drawn to; all those shuffling little ghostly figures he used to play in Boulting brothers films, or Clouseau, with those soulful, mournful brown eyes. For all the success and the women, he is rather a lonely and melancholic figure. And that is what redeems him." Hollywood was immediately interested in adapting Lewis's biography - in the mid 1990s Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...

's company Maverick bought the rights, but the Sellers project did not get off the ground. Many different writers worked on the screenplay, among them Lee Hall
Lee Hall (playwright)
Lee Hall is an English playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for the 2000 film Billy Elliot.-Early life:...

; eventually the writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely came up with a script to tell the story. Director Stephen Hopkins ultimately distanced himself from Lewis's book, and said he was inspired by Sellers's 16mm home movies, which were featured in a 2002 BBC Arena documentary.

Cast

Many familiar faces have small roles in the film; Edward Tudor-Pole
Edward Tudor-Pole
Edward Tudor-Pole is an English musician, singer , TV presenter and actor.- Musical career :Tudor-Pole formed the band Tenpole Tudor in 1974, and eventually came to prominence after appearing in the film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle as a possible replacement for Johnny Rotten in the Sex Pistols...

 (former Tenpole Tudor
Tenpole Tudor
Tenpole Tudor are an English punk band fronted by Edward Tudor-Pole. The band has been active intermittently since 1977.-Origins:Tenpole Tudor formed in 1977 when Tudor-Pole met guitarist Bob Kingston , bassist Dick Crippen, and drummer Gary Long...

 lead singer) plays Spike Milligan
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...

 and The League of Gentlemen
The League of Gentlemen (comedy)
The League of Gentlemen are a quartet of British dark comedy writers/performers, formed in 1995 by Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith...

s Steve Pemberton
Steve Pemberton
Steve James Pemberton is an English actor, comedian, writer and performer, most famous as a member of The League of Gentlemen along with fellow performers Reece Shearsmith, Mark Gatiss and co-writer Jeremy Dyson.-Early life:...

 plays Harry Secombe
Harry Secombe
Sir Harry Donald Secombe CBE was a Welsh entertainer with a talent for comedy and a noted fine tenor singing voice. He is best known for playing Neddie Seagoon, the central character in the BBC radio comedy series The Goon Show...

. Mackenzie Crook
Mackenzie Crook
Paul Mackenzie Crook is a British actor and comedian. He is best known for playing Gareth Keenan in The Office and Ragetti in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.-Life and career:...

 of The Office
The Office (UK TV series)
The Office is a British sitcom television series that was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 9 July 2001. Created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme is about the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough branch of the fictitious...

 also has a small role as a luxury automobile salesman and Richard Ayoade
Richard Ayoade
Richard Ellef Ayoade is a British comedian, actor, writer and director best known for his role as Maurice Moss in The IT Crowd.Ayoade was born an only child to a Norwegian mother, Dagny , and a Nigerian father, Layide Ade Laditi Ayoade. Ayoade studied at St...

 from The IT Crowd
The IT Crowd
The IT Crowd is a British sitcom by Channel 4, written by Graham Linehan, produced by Ash Atalla and starring Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson and Matt Berry...

 in a bit-part as a photographer. In The Trip
The Trip (2010 TV series)
The Trip is a BAFTA award-winning television sitcom series which was first broadcast on BBC Two and BBC HD in the United Kingdom. The series stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as fictionalised versions of themselves undertaking a restaurant tour of northern England.The six episode series, which is...

, actor and comedian Rob Brydon
Rob Brydon
Rob Brydon is a BAFTA-nominated Welsh actor, comedian, radio and television presenter, singer and impressionist...

 plays a fictionalized version of himself and claims that he had a bit part in the film where he impersonated Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....

 giving his acceptance speech but was subsequently cut out.
  • Geoffrey Rush
    Geoffrey Rush
    Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor and film producer. He is one of the few people who has won the "Triple Crown of Acting": an Academy Award, a Tony Award and an Emmy Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting , three British Academy Film Awards , two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen...

     as Peter Sellers
    Peter Sellers
    Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...

  • Charlize Theron
    Charlize Theron
    Charlize Theron is a South African actress, film producer and former fashion model.She rose to fame in the late 1990s following her roles in 2 Days in the Valley, Mighty Joe Young, The Devil's Advocate and The Cider House Rules...

     as Britt Ekland
    Britt Ekland
    Britt-Marie Ekland is a Swedish actress and singer, and a long time resident of the United Kingdom. She is best known for her roles as a Bond girl in The Man with the Golden Gun, and in the British cult horror film The Wicker Man, as well as her marriage to actor Peter Sellers, and her...

  • Emily Watson
    Emily Watson
    Emily Watson is an English actress. She gave an acclaimed debut film performance in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves.- Early life :...

     as Anne Sellers
  • John Lithgow
    John Lithgow
    John Arthur Lithgow is an American actor, musician, and author. Presently, he is involved with a wide range of media projects, including stage, television, film, and radio...

     as Blake Edwards
    Blake Edwards
    Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...

  • Miriam Margolyes
    Miriam Margolyes
    Miriam Margolyes, OBE is an English actress and voice artist. Her earliest roles were in theatre and after several supporting roles in film and television she won a BAFTA Award for her role in The Age of Innocence .-Early life:...

     as Peg Sellers
  • Peter Vaughan
    Peter Vaughan
    Peter Vaughan is an English character actor, known for many supporting roles in a variety of British film and television productions. He has worked extensively on the stage, becoming known for roles such as police inspectors, Soviet agents and similar parts...

     as Bill Sellers
  • Sonia Aquino
    Sonia Aquino
    - Biography :Theatre, cinema and television actress, she graduated at the National School of the Cinema in Rome and attended Francesca De Sapio's Duse Studio. Moreover she studied performing arts at the theatre "Bellini" in Naples, taking part in some stages held by Peter Del Monte, Marco...

     as Sophia Loren
    Sophia Loren
    Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...

  • Stanley Tucci
    Stanley Tucci
    Stanley Tucci is an American actor, writer, film producer and film director. He has been nominated for several notable film awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his performance in The Lovely Bones...

     as Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick
    Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...

  • Stephen Fry
    Stephen Fry
    Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

     as Maurice Woodruff
    Maurice Woodruff
    Maurice Woodruff was an English clairvoyant and astrologer, born and raised in London. He achieved considerable fame both in his native England and internationally due to the perceived accuracy of his predictions. He presented his predictions to the public via newspapers and also via stage,...

  • Henry Goodman
    Henry Goodman
    Henry Goodman is a British theatre actor. He trained at RADA in London alongside Jonathan Pryce.In 1988, he played George Green's brother-in-law Cyril in London's Burning. He played character roles in episodes of the popular UK police drama The Bill...

     as Dennis Selinger
  • Alison Steadman
    Alison Steadman
    Alison Steadman OBE is an English actress. She established her career with roles such as Beverley in Abigail's Party and Candice Marie in Nuts in May for the director Mike Leigh, to whom she was once married. In addition to her stage and radio work, she has had lead roles in The Singing Detective,...

     as Casting Agent
  • Emilia Fox
    Emilia Fox
    Emilia Rose Elizabeth Fox is an award-winning English actress, known for her role as Dr. Nikki Alexander on BBC crime drama Silent Witness, having joined the cast in 2004 following the departure of Amanda Burton. She also appears as Morgause in the BBC's Merlin beginning in the programme's second...

     as Lynne Frederick
    Lynne Frederick
    Lynne Maria Frederick was an English film actress. In a career spanning ten years she made about thirty films or television drama appearances, but she is best remembered as the last wife of Peter Sellers. She was married twice after his death.-Early life:Frederick was born in Hillingdon,...

  • Nigel Havers
    Nigel Havers
    Nigel Allan Havers is an English actor. He is probably best known for his BAFTA-nominated role as Lord Andrew Lindsay in the 1981 British film Chariots of Fire, and for his role as Dr. Tom Latimer in the British TV comedy series Don't Wait Up...

     as David Niven
    David Niven
    James David Graham Niven , known as David Niven, was a British actor and novelist, best known for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days and Sir Charles Lytton, a.k.a. "the Phantom", in The Pink Panther...

  • Heidi Klum
    Heidi Klum
    Heidi Samuel , better known by her birth name Heidi Klum, is a German model, actress, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and occasional singer. In 2008 she became an American citizen while maintaining her native German citizenship...

     as Ursula Andress
    Ursula Andress
    Ursula Andress is a Swiss actress and a sex symbol of the 1960s. She is known for her roles as Bond girl Honey Ryder in Dr...

  • Lucy Punch
    Lucy Punch
    Lucy Punch is an English actress. Her credits include the television shows Doc Martin and The Class, and the films Hot Fuzz and Bad Teacher.-Life and career:...

     as Stewardess
  • Joseph Long
    Joseph Long (actor)
    Joseph Long is an actor. He has appeared in numerous BBC television productions including Doctor Who, Ashes to Ashes, The Bill and East Enders, He has also appeared in film, for instance in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers as film director Carlo Ponti. He portrayed Bernardino Drovetti in the...

     as Carlo Ponti
    Carlo Ponti
    Carlo Ponti was an Italian film producer with over 140 production credits, and the husband of Italian movie star Sophia Loren.-Career:...


Awards

The film won the 2005 Golden Globe award for Best Miniseries or Television Film and Rush was awarded the Globe's Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film. It was nominated for the Palme d'Or
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...

 at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival
2004 Cannes Film Festival
The 2004 Cannes Film Festival started on May 12 and ran until May 23. The Palme d'Or went to the American film Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore.-Jury:* Quentin Tarantino, President * Emmanuelle Béart * Edwidge Danticat * Tilda Swinton...

.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK