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Results for Peter Ustinov
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Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures Buy this Movie |
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Pavarotti in Confidence with Peter Ustinov Buy this Movie |
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For more information on Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov, visit Britannica.com.
Bibliography
See his autobiography, Dear Me (1977); studies by T. Thomas (1971) and V. L. Stewart (1988).
Quotes:
"A diplomat these days in nothing, but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally."
"Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."
"I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first."
"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious."
"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."
"The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come."
See more famous quotes by
Peter Ustinov
| Sir Peter Ustinov | ||||||||||||||
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 Ustinov as Hercule Poirot |
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| Birth name | Peter Alexander Ustinov | |||||||||||||
| Born | 16 April 1921 London, England |
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| Died | 28 March 2004 (aged 82) Genolier, Vaud, Switzerland |
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| Spouse(s) | Isolde Denham (1940-1950) Suzanne Cloutier (1954-1971) Helene du Lau d Allemans' (1972-2004) |
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Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov,
Ustinov was born in Swiss Cottage, London. His father, Iona (Jona) Baron von Ustinov, known to his friends as "Klop" ("blow" in Yiddish, "bedbug" in Russian), was of Russian and German descent, and had served as a Lt. in the German Air Force in World War I, worked as a press officer at the German Embassy in London in the 1930s, and was a reporter for a German news agency. In 1935 he began working for the British intelligence service MI5 and became a British citizen, thus avoiding internment or deportation during the war. (Peter Wright mentions in his book Spycatcher that Klop was possibly the spy known as U35; Ustinov says in his autobiography that his father hosted secret meetings of senior British and German officials at their London home.) Jona von Ustinov also had Ethiopian royal ancestry;[2] Peter's great-grandfather, a Swiss missionary, married Susan Bell in Magdala, whose mother belonged to the Tewodros Dynasty. This means that Ustinov could arguably be considered the first man of known African descent to have won an Academy Award. The distinguished Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, whose stepfather was another Ustinov, is related to this part of the family.
Peter Ustinov's mother, Nadia (Nadezhda) Leontievna Benois, was a painter and ballet designer of Russian, French and Italian ancestry. Her father Leon Benois was an imperial Russian architect and owner of Leonardo's painting Madonna Benois. His more famous brother Alexandre Benois was an outstanding stage designer who worked with Stravinsky and Diaghilev. Their paternal ancestor Jules-César Benois was a chef who had left France for St Petersburg during the French Revolution and became a chef to Tsar Paul.
Ustinov was educated at Westminster School and had a difficult and uncertain childhood because of his parents' constant bickering and personality clashes. Whilst at school he considered anglicizing his name to "Peter Austin" but was counselled against it by a fellow pupil who said that he should “Drop the ‘von’ but keep the ‘Ustinov’”. After training as an actor in his late teens, along with early attempts at playwriting, he made his stage début in 1938 at the Players' Theatre, becoming quickly established. He later wrote, "I was not irresistibly drawn to the drama. It was an escape road from the dismal rat race of school."[3]
Following military service as a private soldier during World War II, during which he had made propaganda films, starting with One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942), with actors such as David Niven, he began to branch out into writing. His first major success was with The Love of Four Colonels in 1951. He starred alongside Humphrey Bogart and Aldo Ray in We're No Angels (1955). His career as a dramatist continued alongside his acting career, his best-known play being Romanoff and Juliet (1956). His film roles include Roman emperor Nero in Quo Vadis? (1951), Captain Vere in Billy Budd (1962), Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus (1960), an old man surviving a totalitarian future in Logan's Run (1976), and in a half dozen films as Hercule Poirot, a part he first played in Death on the Nile (1978). Ustinov voiced the well-known anthropomorphic lion Prince John of the 1973 Disney animated movie Robin Hood. He also worked on several films as writer and occasionally director, including The Way Ahead (1944), School for Secrets (1946), Hot Millions (1968) and Memed, My Hawk (1984).
He won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in Spartacus (1960) and Topkapi (1964). He also won one Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Quo Vadis, according to IMDB.com (he famously set the Oscar and Globe statues up on his desk as if playing doubles tennis; the game was also a love of his life, as was ocean yachting). Furthermore, Ustinov was the winner of three Emmys, one Grammy, and was nominated for two Tony awards.
Between 1952 and 1955 Ustinov starred alongside Peter Jones in the much-loved
BBC radio comedy In All Directions. The show featured Ustinov and Jones as themselves in a
car in London perpetually searching for Copthorne Avenue. The comedy derived from the
characters they met along the way, often also played by themselves. The show was unusual for the time as it was largely
improvised rather than scripted. Ustinov and Jones improvised on to a tape which was then edited for broadcast by
Frank Muir and
During the 1960's, with the encouragement of Sir George Solti, Ustinov directed several operas including Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole, Schonberg's Erwartung, and Mozart's Magic Flute. Further demonstrating his great talent and versatility in the theater, Ustinov later did set and costume production for Don Giovanni.
His autobiography, Dear Me (1977), was well received and saw him describe his life (ostensibly his childhood) whilst being interrogated by his own ego, with forays into philosophy, theater, fame, and self-realization. In concluding, Ustinov muses "We have gone through much together, Dear Me, and yet it suddenly occurs to me we don't know each other at all".
In the later part of his life (from 1969 until his death), his acting and writing tasks took second place to his work on behalf of UNICEF - the United Nations Children's Fund, for which he was a Goodwill Ambassador and fundraiser. In this role he visited some of the neediest children and made use of his ability to make just about anybody laugh, including many of the world's most disadvantaged children. "Sir Peter could make anyone laugh," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy is quoted as saying. "His one-man show in German was the funniest performance I have ever seen – and I don’t speak a word of German."
Ustinov also served as President of the World Federalist Movement from 1991 until his death. He once said, "World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest, in its only sense, the patriotism of men who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good" (see [2]).
He is most well-known to many British people as a chat-show guest, a role to which he was ideally suited. Towards the end of his life he undertook some one-man stage shows in which he let loose his raconteur streak - he told the story of his life, including some moments of tension with the national society he was born into (as just one example, he took a test as a child which asked him to name a Russian composer; he wrote Rimsky-Korsakov but was marked down, told the correct answer was Tchaikovsky since they had been studying him in class, and told to stop showing off).
A car enthusiast since the age of four, he owned a succession of interesting machines ranging from a Fiat Topolino, several
He spoke English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Russian, fluently, as well as some Turkish and modern Greek. He was proficient in accents and dialects in all his languages.
In the late 1960s, he became a Swiss citizen to avoid the British tax system of the time which taxed the earnings of the wealthy at up to 90 per cent. However, he was knighted in 1990, and was appointed Chancellor of the University of Durham in 1992, having previously served as Rector of the University of Dundee in the late 1970s (a role in which he moved from being merely a figure-head to taking on a political role, negotiating with militant students).
He received an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).
Ustinov was a frequent defender of the Chinese government, stating in an address to the University of Durham in 2000, "People are annoyed with the Chinese for not respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult to have the same attitude to human rights."
In 2003, Durham's postgraduate college (previously known as the Graduate Society) was renamed Ustinov College.
He died on 28 March 2004, due to heart failure in a clinic in Genolier, near his home in Bursins, Vaud, Switzerland. He was so well regarded as a goodwill ambassador that UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy spoke at his funeral and represented United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
When, in an interview, he was once asked what he would like it to read on his tombstone, Ustinov replied "Please keep off the grass".
Amongst his lesser known works, Ustinov presented and narrated the official video review of the 1987 Formula One season. His commentary proved highly entertaining. Ustinov also narrated the documentary series "Wings of the Red Star."
Ustinov graciously gave his name to the Foundation of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for their prestigious Sir Peter Ustinov Television Scriptwriting Award, given annually to a young television screenwriter.
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Hugh Griffith for Ben-Hur |
Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor 1960 for Spartacus |
Succeeded by George Chakiris for West Side Story |
| Preceded by Melvyn Douglas for Hud |
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor 1964 for Topkapi |
Succeeded by Martin Balsam for A Thousand Clowns |
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Peter Ustinov was the President of the World Federalist Movement from 1991 to 2004, the time of his death. WFM is a global NGO that promotes the concept of one world government. WFM wish to lobby those in powerful positions to establish a unified human government based on democracy and civil society. The United Nations and other world agencies would become the institutions of a World Federation. The UN would be the federal government and nation states would become like provinces.
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Trivia sections are discouraged under
Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
 Peter Ustinov at a book signing session at the ABC Shop, in The Myer Centre, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia (photo taken in either 1992 or 1993) |
 Peter Ustinov at a book signing session at the ABC Shop, in The Myer Centre, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia (photo taken in either 1992 or 1993) |
 Peter Ustinov at a book signing session at the ABC Shop, in The Myer Centre, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia (photo taken in either 1992 or 1993) |
Features:
Short Subjects:
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by (Learie Constantine) as Rector of the University of St Andrews |
Rector of the
University of Dundee 1968–1974 |
Succeeded by Sir Clement Freud |
| Preceded by Dame Margot Fonteyn |
Chancellor of the University of
Durham 1992 – 2004 |
Succeeded by Bill Bryson |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ustinov, Peter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ustinov, Sir Peter Alexander; Alexander Baron von Ustinov, Peter |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Academy Award-winning British-born actor, writer, dramatist and raconteur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 16, 1921 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 28, 2004, aged 82 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Genolier, Vaud, Switzerland |
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