Peter Sellers summary

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Peter Sellers, orig. Richard Henry Sellers, (born Sept. 8, 1925, Southsea, Hampshire, Eng.—died July 24, 1980, London), British film actor. The son of vaudeville performers, he acted from childhood in his parents’ comedy act. In the early 1950s he performed on radio in the popular comedy series The Goon Show. He began appearing in the movies in the mid-1950s; his performances in The Mouse That Roared (1959), I’m All Right, Jack (1959), Lolita (1962), and Dr. Strangelove (1964), in which he played three characters, were especially well received. He was enormously popular as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in the comedy The Pink Panther (1964) and its sequels, and he later won acclaim for his role as a simpleminded gardener in Being There (1979). His large range of characters earned him international stardom at a time when rigid typecasting was usual.

directing Summary

Directing, the craft of controlling the evolution of a performance out of material composed or assembled by an author. The performance may be live, as in a theatre and in some broadcasts, or it may be recorded, as in motion pictures and the majority of broadcast material. The term is also used in

acting Summary

Acting, the performing art in which movement, gesture, and intonation are used to realize a fictional character for the stage, for motion pictures, or for television. (Read Lee Strasberg’s 1959 Britannica essay on acting.) Acting is generally agreed to be a matter less of mimicry, exhibitionism, or

comedy Summary

Comedy, type of drama or other art form the chief object of which, according to modern notions, is to amuse. It is contrasted on the one hand with tragedy and on the other with farce, burlesque, and other forms of humorous amusement. The classic conception of comedy, which began with Aristotle in

film Summary

Film, series of still photographs on film, projected in rapid succession onto a screen by means of light. Because of the optical phenomenon known as persistence of vision, this gives the illusion of actual, smooth, and continuous movement. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film