Early Life
Elliott was born in London, England, the son of Nina (née Mitchell) and Myles Laymen Farr Elliott. He attended Malvern College and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
In World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force, training as a sergeant radio operator and gunner and serving with No. 76 Squadron RAF under the command of Leonard Cheshire. On the night of 23/24 September 1942, his Handley Page Halifax bomber took part in an air raid on the U-boat pens at Flensburg, Germany. The aircraft was hit by flak and subsequently ditched in the North Sea near Sylt, Germany. Elliot and two other crew members survived and he spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp in Silesia, during which time he became involved in amateur dramatics.
Read more about this topic: Denholm Elliott
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Mine honor is my life, both grow in one,
Take honor from me, and my life is done.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)