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Dateline: 29th March, 2004 Sir Peter Ustinov Sir Peter Ustinov has died at his hiome in Switzerland at the age of 82, just short of his 83rd birthday. In an acting career of more than sixty years he twice won an Oscar for best supporting actor, for Spartacus (1961) and Topkapi (1965) and nominated for Quo Vadis in 1951. he was also nominated for best screenplay for Hot Millions (1968). He was also twice-nominated by the Writers' Guild of America for screenplays he wrote. Born in England to Russian parents, he claimed to have Swiss, Ethiopian, Italian and French blood and described himself as "ethnically filthy - and proud of it". He left Westminster School at the age of 16 and became an actor by the time he was eighteen and, very quickly afterwards, a playwright. His first play, House of Regrets, written when he was nineteen, had a West End outing at the Albery. In the army during World War II he sepnt most of his time with the Army Cinema Unit where, as well as recruitment films, he found time to write more plays and appear in three films, including The Way Ahead, which he also co-wrote - although he did spend some time as David Niven's batman, the start of a lifelong friendship between the two men. He was an actor, playwright, novelist, travel writer, TV journalist (in a series for the BBC, Peter Ustinov's Russia, he visited thirty Russian cities) and raconteur. He was a favourite of chat show hosts - Michael Parkinson puts him in his "top five" - because of his storytelling abilities. He became an ambassador oif the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and was knighted in 1990. He became Chancellor of the University of Durham in 1992 and ten years later the University named its graduate college after him. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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