Peter Sellers played three parts in Dr. Strangelove and was originally cast in a fourth, and the range across them, a mild president, a British officer and a Nazi scientist, is astonishing in a single film.
He came from The Goon Show on radio, where the voice work was the entire instrument, and Being There gave him his best and last major performance as a gardener mistaken for a sage.
He said repeatedly in interviews that he had no personality of his own outside the characters, which was probably partly performance and probably partly true.
The Pink Panther films made him internationally famous and he grew to resent Clouseau considerably.
James MasonLolita (1962) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Kubrick adapted a novel about a predator by removing everything the Production Code forbade, which was most of the subject. He later said that had he understood the censorship…
Jack WardenFinal film of Sellers' great period. Being There is Hal Ashby's 1979 American satire adapting Jerzy Kosinski's 1971 novella.
David Niven1967 non-Eon Bond spoof with David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen. Multiple directors, chaotic production, cult oddity.
George C. ScottKubrick's 1964 Cold War satire. Sellers in three roles, Scott as Buck Turgidson.
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