Actor: Basil Rathbone

Basil Rathbone played Sherlock Holmes fourteen times and the association became so complete that he grew to resent it, publicly and at length.

Before that he was Hollywood’s premier screen villain and its best fencer, and the duels in Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood are genuine swordsmanship. Errol Flynn was by all accounts the weaker fencer of the two.

He was decorated for military intelligence work in the First World War and was nominated twice for Academy Awards.