Peter Ustinov - Career Highlights

Career Highlights

Ustinov served as a private soldier in the British Army during World War II, including time spent as batman to David Niven while writing a Niven film. In 1939 he appeared in White Cargo at the Aylesbury Rep, where he had a different accent every night. He also appeared in propaganda films, debuting in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), in which he was required to deliver lines in English, Latin and Dutch. After the war he began writing; his first major success was with the play The Love of Four Colonels (1951). He starred with Humphrey Bogart and Aldo Ray in We're No Angels (1955). His career as a dramatist continued, his best-known play being Romanoff and Juliet (1956). His film roles include Roman emperor Nero in Quo Vadis (1951), Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus (1960), Captain Vere in Billy Budd (1962), an old man surviving a totalitarian future in Logan's Run (1976), and, in half a dozen films, Hercule Poirot, a part he first played in Death on the Nile (1978). Ustinov voiced the anthropomorphic lion Prince John of the 1973 Disney animated film 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).

Ustinov won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in Spartacus (1960) and Topkapi (1964). He could arguably be considered the first man of known Russian descent to have won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He also won one Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Quo Vadis (he set the Oscar and Globe statuettes 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 and one Grammy, and was nominated for two Tony Awards.

Between 1952 and 1955, he starred with Peter Jones in the BBC radio comedy In All Directions. The series featured Ustinov and Jones as themselves in a London car journey perpetually searching for Copthorne Avenue. The comedy derived from the characters they met, whom they often also portrayed. The show was unusual for the time as it was improvised rather than scripted. Ustinov and Jones improvised on a tape, which was very difficult then edited for broadcast by Frank Muir and Denis Norden, who also sometimes took part. The favourite characters were Morris and Dudley Grosvenor, two rather stupid East End spivs whose sketches always ended with the phrase "Run for it Morry" (or Dudley as appropriate.)

During the 1960s, with the encouragement of Sir Georg Solti, Ustinov directed several operas including Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Ravel's L'heure espagnole, Schoenberg's Erwartung and Mozart's The Magic Flute. Further demonstrating his great talent and versatility in the theatre, Ustinov later did set and costume design for Don Giovanni.

His autobiography, Dear Me (1977), was well received and saw him describe his life (ostensibly his childhood) while being interrogated by his own ego, with forays into philosophy, theatre, 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, 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."

On 31 October 1984, Ustinov was to meet with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She was assassinated on her way to the meeting.

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."

He is best known to many Britons and Americans as a chat-show guest, a role to which he was ideally suited. He was an extremely frequent guest of Jack Paar's Tonight Show in the early 1960s and was a guest on the famous "upside down" episode of the American talk show Late Night, during which the camera, mounted on a slowly revolving wheel, gradually rotated the picture 360 degrees during the course of an hour; Ustinov appeared midway through and was photographed upside down in close-up as he spoke while his host only appeared in long shots. Toward the end of Ustinov's 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 Lancias, a Hispano-Suiza, a pre-selector Delage and a special-bodied Jowett Jupiter. He made records like Phoney Folklore which included the song of the Russian peasant "whose tractor had betrayed him" and his "Grand Prix of Gibraltar" was a vehicle for his creative wit and ability at car engine sound-effects and voices.

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 heavily taxed the earnings of the wealthy. However, he was knighted in 1990, and was appointed Chancellor of Durham University in 1992, having previously been elected as the first Rector of the University of Dundee in 1968 (a role in which he moved from being merely a figurehead to taking on a political role, negotiating with militant students). Ustinov was re-elected to the post for a second term three year term in 1971 narrowly beating Michael Parkinson after a disputed recount.

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 Durham University 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.

Ustinov came to Berlin on a UNICEF mission in 2002 to visit the circle of United Buddy Bears that promote a more peaceful world between nations, cultures and religions for the first time. He was determined to ensure that Iraq would also be represented in this circle of about 140 countries. In 2003, he sponsored and opened the second exhibition of the United Buddy Bears in Berlin.

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 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.

Ustinov appeared as a guest star during the first season of The Muppet Show in 1976. The theme of the show had Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Hilda "The Wardrobe Lady" and Scooter openly saying to Kermit the Frog how much they admired and wanted to be like Peter Ustinov. Kermit was under the impression that they harboured these feeling towards him but hastily altered them when Ustinov was on the show, and so to cheer himself up Kermit goes off and sings "It's Not Easy Bein' Green". At the end of the episode Kermit admits to Ustinov that he feels a bit jealous and Ustinov responds by saying "...I'm jealous of you. I've always wanted to be a frog". One of the highlights of the episode is when Ustinov becomes "The Robot Politician", which was Bunsen Honeydew's latest invention. In the sketch when "The Robot Politician" inevitably breaks down, Ustinov accidentally punches Dr. Bunsen Honeydew in the face before blowing up. In a later interview about his time with Jim Henson's creations he said "...you took the characters absolutely seriously and paid no attention to the manipulator..." adding "...there's an old theatrical saying...'never work with children or animals'...I would add puppets to that list because they always steal the limelight."