Peter Ustinov
Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov (born Peter Alexander von Ustinow) (April 16, 1921 - March 29, 2004) was a British actor, writer and dramatist.
Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot
Ustinov was born in Swiss Cottage in London. His father, Iona (Jona) von Ustinov, was half Russian and half German and was known to his friends as "Klop" (bedbug). Klop had served as a German fighter pilot in World War I and worked as a press officer at the German Embassy in London in the 1930s. In 1935 he began working for the British intelligence service MI5 (possibly the spy known as U35). Peter Ustinov's mother, Nadezhda (Nadia) Leontievna Benois, was a painter and ballet designer of mixed Russian, French and Italian ancestry. Her paternal ancestor Jules-CÃÂésar Benois was a chef who had left France for St Petersburg during the French Revolution and became a chef to Tsar Paul.
Peter made his stage dÃÂébut as an actor in 1938, becoming quickly established. After military service in World War II, he began to branch out into writing, and his first major success was with The Love of Four Colonels in 1951. 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 several films as Hercule Poirot, a part he first played in Death on the Nile (1978). His autobiography, Dear Me (1977), was well received.
He won Oscars for his roles in Spartacus (1960) and Topkapi (1964).
He spoke English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish fluently, as well as some Turkish and modern Greek. Since 1969 he had been an ambassador for UNICEF and UNESCO. He once said, "I feel that [Americans] sometimes think that UNICEF is a Bulgarian. That UNESCO is a Romanian. And that they're up to no good. Well, I've tried to disabuse them and of course, attracted their suspicions myself, because my name is not particularly reassuring."
He was knighted in 1990, and was appointed Chancellor of the University of Durham in 1992.
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."
He passed away in 2004 due to heart failure in a clinic in Genolier, near his home in Bursins, Vaud, Switzerland, and was buried in a private ceremony in the town on Saturday April 3, 2004. He was so well regarded as a goodwill ambassador that UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy spoke at the 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".