Peter Ustinov

Peter Ustinov spoke French, German, English, Italian, Russian and Spanish fluently, and had a good command of Turkish and Greek among other languages.

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On 31 October 1984, Ustinov was waiting in the garden of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to conduct an interview for an Irish television documentary when she was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards (Beant Singh, who was killed while trying to escape after his arrest, and Satwant Singh, who was sentenced to death in 1988) as she approached Ustinov and the film crew.

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During the Second World War, Pvt. Peter Ustinov served as batman to Lieutenant Colonel David Niven.

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He was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador from 1968 until his death in 2004.

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Both his father and his uncle were officers in the German army and fought against Britain in the First World War.

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He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Dundee and an honorary Doctor of Music by the Cleveland Institute of Music in Cleveland, Ohio.

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He was a member of the International Academy of Humanism and a recipient of the Humanist Award.

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According to Peter Wright's book "Spycatcher," Ustinov's father, Klop Ustinov, worked actively as an agent runner for MI5 (the British Security Service, counter-espionage) during the Second World War. He also had the distinction of having held commissions in the Russian, German and British armies (possibly at different times).

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In Billy Budd (1962), he directed Terence Stamp's Oscar-nominated performance.

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Before going into the army, he wrote two plays, both written while he was in the service. One was a success and the other a disaster.

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Ustinov was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1975 Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to drama. Fifteen years later, in the 1990 list, he received a knighthood (Bachelor Knight) for the same services.

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He served as Chancellor of Durham University from 1992 until his death in 2004.

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In 1964, he accepted the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on behalf of Margaret Rutherford, who was not present at the ceremony.

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His funeral was held at Geneva's historic St Pierre Cathedral. He was subsequently buried in the village of Bursins, where he had lived in a château since 1971. [April 2004].

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He wrote the screenplay for The Way Ahead together with Eric Ambler while he was in the army.

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From 1968 to 1974, he was Rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland.

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Peter Ustinov played five different English or British kings: the lion versions of Prince John (the future King John) and his brother Richard the Lionheart in Robin Hood (1973); the future King George IV in Beau Brummell (1954); his great-nephew King Edward VII in Episode #1.1 (1980); and King William IV, George IV's younger brother and eventual successor, in Victoria & Albert (2001).

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Ustinov's mother, Nadia Benois, was the niece of Alexandre Benois. Both were designers for the Mariinsky Opera and Ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and both worked on impresario Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons and Ballets Russes productions. Ustinov's mother was the costume designer on two films he directed: Vice Versa (1948) and Private Angelo (1949).

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Ustinov took on two roles that Jim Broadbent would later play (Ustinov first): "Fix" from Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days, in the 1989 miniseries Around the World in 80 Days and in a 1992 BBC Radio adaptation; and William IV, in Victoria & Albert (2001) and The Young Victoria (2009). More than 30 years earlier, he had failed an audition for the role of Fix in the film Around the World in 80 Days (1956).

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He wrote 23 plays, 13 books and 9 films, as well as numerous volumes of memoirs, and by 1997 he had directed 8 films, 8 plays and 14 operas, one of them at the Bolshoi.

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A memorial service for him was held on 18 November 2004 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London.

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His third marriage was to Helene in 1973.

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Along with Hugh Burden, Ustinov is one of two actors who appeared in both One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) and One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975).

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He held various academic posts and served as president of the World Federalist Movement.

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He served as a jury member at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.

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He was buried in the Cimetière de Bursins, Bursins, District de Nyon, Vaud, Switzerland, an Alpine village overlooking Lake Geneva.

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He served as a jury member at the 1986 Venice Film Festival.

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