An A-Z of Actors: U

~ beetleypete

‘U’ is not a kind letter for surnames, so to give you room for some choices, I am only going to feature one fairly obvious choice for this letter. Good luck!

Sir Peter Ustinov pretty much did it all. Film, Theatre, Opera, TV, as well as writing, directing, and designing. His career lasted almost five decades, from 1938, until 2004, the year he died. Starting out on stage in the 1930s, he was soon working in films, with ‘One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing’, in 1940. Twelve films later, he starred as Emperor Nero, in the epic ‘Quo Vadis’ (1951), beginning a run of playing in historical films including ‘Beau Brummell’ (1954), and ‘Spartacus’ (1960), which won him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

He made roughly one film a year for the next sixteen years, before ‘Logan’s Run’ (1976), then ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ (1977). In 1978, he took on the role of detective Hercule Poirot, in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s ‘Death On The Nile’, playing him again in ‘Evil Under The Sun’ in 1982. Many more film roles continued, alongside TV documentaries, writing, and appearing on stage in a one-man show. His last film was ‘Winter Solstice’ (2004).

41 thoughts on “An A-Z of Actors: U”

  1. Great post 🙂 Speaking of One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing, I remember that it was directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, one of the greatest British filmmaking teams in cinema history. Anyway, keep up the great work as always 🙂

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  4. Ooh…the letter U certainly is a tough one, but luckily a few people in the comments already named one of my favorite actors: Karl Urban. He was terrific in Dredd, and in the new Star Trek movies, I have to say that out of all the new actors portraying those legendary characters he is the only one that nailed it: it was almost as if he had played the role of Bones in the original series 😊😊

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    1. As I said below, Michel, I don’t know him that well, probably because I have seen few, or perhaps none, of the films he is in. Thanks for adding your choice though.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  5. Like a few others here, I could only think of the great Sir Peter Ustinov (“Spartacus” / “Death on the Nile” / “Topkapi” / “Logan’s Run”). By the way, he also won an award for Best Supporting Actor for “Topkapi.”

    Thanks to Cindy Bruchman for bringing up Karl Urban, whose name initially eluded me. I was first introduced to Urban as the actor playing Julius Caesar in a “Xena: Warrior Princess” story arc. But since that time, he’s made quite a few appearances in big budget films (including two “LOTR” films / “The Chronicles of Riddick” / “The Bourne Supremacy” / the current batch of “Star Trek” films / “Thor: Ragnarok”).

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  10. Well, everyone’s been picked – feels like I got left off the team! I will say that here in the US, Gabrielle Union has made several films that have been big hits, like “Bring It On”, “Think Like A Man” and just last month, “Breaking In.” Doubt they travelled much outside the US, but she is very popular here!

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    2. I know around four or five others, Peggy, some rather vague. And that’s without using foreign-language actors. I picked Ustinov to give the American readers something to choose.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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