"I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.""If you're going to be a prisoner of your own mind, the least you can do is make sure it's well furnished."
"Life is unfair but remember sometimes it is unfair in your favour."
"The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought."
"If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done."
"The truth is an ambition which is beyond us."
"Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first."
"I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me the most civilized music in the world."
To my eternal shame, I neglected to notice another significant centenary that came and went last Friday - that of the magnificent Sir Peter Ustinov!
Oscar-winning actor, filmmaker, memoirist, wit, author, director, playwright, chat-show favourite, polyglot, polymath - many are the epithets (and accolades) applicable to this marvellous man. As Brian MacFarlane described on the BFI Screenonline website:
"...if there is something of the Renaissance man about Ustinov (he is also a playwright, autobiographer, raconteur of one-man show proportions), there may also be something of the dilettante, as if he can't quite settle to anything because of all the conflicting claims on his darting imagination. The problem is that he does them all well."
The world will never see the like of him again.
Sir Peter Alexander von Ustinov CBE FRSA (16th April 1921 – 28th March 2004)
Awww. I found him to be a bit pretentious, but very likable. I would never have wanted to work with him. All that scalding disregard. But he was immensely talented and had a good long run. He was made for stage work. The screen was too small to hold all his intellectual wonder.
ReplyDeleteHe genuinely was an expert in myriad fields, not in the least pretentious - pretentious is someone like Gwyneth Paltrow; a mediocre actress with no qualifications nor connection to the real world preaching to the gullible public about her "lifestyle tips" and quack "remedies". Jx
DeleteI could listen to him speak all day
ReplyDeleteMe too. Jx
DeleteHe sounds like an interesting person. I don't know the name, but I'll have to look back over his work to see if I might remember him from any roles.
ReplyDeleteHercule Poirot, Blackbeard, Emperor Nero (in Quo Vadis), Dr. Samuel Johnson, Herod the Great, the Prince Regent and many, many more, including the voices of Kings John and Richard in Disney's Robin Hood... Jx
DeleteThank you! Even for a kid I wasn't big on Disney, but I did love that Robin Hood.
DeleteA one off, totally unique.
ReplyDeleteThere could never be another. Jx
DeleteSublime raconteur. On Ms Paltrow - it's time more people called her out her failings.
ReplyDeleteSir Peter was magnificent, and Ms P hardly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath... Jx
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