Peter Alexander von Ustinov (16 April 1921-28 March 2004) was an English actor, writer, and filmmaker.
He was a fixture on television talk shows and lecture circuits for much of his career. An intellectual and diplomat, he held various academic posts and served as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF and president of the World Federalist Movement.
Ustinov was the winner of numerous awards during his life, including two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor, Emmy Awards, Golden Globes, and BAFTA Awards for acting, and a Grammy Award for best recording for children, as well as the recipient of governmental honours from, amongst others, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
In 2003, Durham University changed the name of its Graduate Society to Ustinov College in honour of the significant contributions Ustinov had made as chancellor of the university from 1992 until his death.
Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinov was born in London, England. His father, Jona Freiherr von Ustinov, was of Russian, Polish Jewish, German, and Ethiopian descent. Peter's paternal grandfather was Baron Plato von Ustinov, a Russian noble, and his grandmother was Magdalena Hall, of mixed German-Ethiopian-Jewish origin.
Ustinov's great-grandfather Moritz Hall, a Jewish refugee from Kraków and later a Christian convert and collaborator of Swiss and German missionaries in Ethiopia, married into a German-Ethiopian family. Peter's paternal great-great-grandparents were the German painter Eduard Zander and the Ethiopian aristocrat Court-Lady Isette-Werq in Gondar.
Ustinov's mother, Nadezhda
Leontievna Benois, known as Nadia, was a painter and ballet designer of
French, German, Italian, and Russian descent. Her father, Leon Benois,
was an Imperial Russian architect and owner of Leonardo da Vinci's
painting Madonna Benois.
Jona or Iona worked as a press officer at the German Embassy in London in the 1930s and was a reporter for a German news agency. In 1935, two years after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Jona von Ustinov began working for the British intelligence service MI5 and became a British citizen, thus avoiding internment during the war. The statutory notice of his application for citizenship was published in a Welsh newspaper so as not to alert the Germans. He was the controller of Wolfgang Gans zu Putlitz, an MI5 spy in the German embassy in London, who furnished information on Hitler's intentions before the Second World War.
More information: Legacy
Ustinov was educated at Westminster School and had a difficult childhood because of his parents' constant fighting. One of his schoolmates was Rudolf von Ribbentrop, the eldest son of the Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. While at school, Ustinov considered anglicizing his name to Peter Austin, but was counselled against it by a fellow pupil who said that he should Drop the 'von' but keep the 'Ustinov'.
In his late teens he trained as an
actor at the London Theatre Studio. While there, on 18 July 1938 he made
his first appearance on the stage at the Barn Theatre, Shere, playing
Waffles in Chekhov’s The Wood Demon, and his London stage début later
that year at the Players' Theatre, becoming quickly established. He
later wrote, I was not irresistibly drawn to the drama. It was an
escape road from the dismal rat race of school.
After the war, he began writing; his first major success was with the play The Love of Four Colonels (1951). He starred with Humphrey Bogart and Aldo Ray in We're No Angels (1955).
His career as a dramatist continued, his best-known play being Romanoff and Juliet (1956). His film roles include Roman emperor Nero in Quo Vadis (1951), Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus (1960), Captain Vere in Billy Budd (1962), Captain Blackbeard in the Disney film Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968), and an old man surviving a totalitarian future in Logan's Run (1976).
Ustinov voiced the anthropomorphic lions Prince John and King Richard in the 1973 Disney animated film Robin Hood. He also worked on several films as writer and occasionally director, including The Way Ahead (1944), School for Secrets (1946), Hot Millions (1968), and Memed, My Hawk (1984).
In half a dozen films, he played Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot, first in Death on the Nile (1978) and then in 1982's Evil Under the Sun, 1985's Thirteen at Dinner (TV film), 1986's Dead Man's Folly (TV film), 1986's Murder in Three Acts (TV film), and 1988's Appointment with Death.
Ustinov won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in Spartacus (1960) and Topkapi (1964). He also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Quo Vadis. Ustinov was also the winner of three Emmys and one Grammy and was nominated for two Tony Awards.
More information: The Guardian
His autobiography, Dear Me (1977), was well-received and had him describe his life (ostensibly his childhood) while being interrogated by his own ego, with forays into philosophy, theatre, fame, and self-realization.
From 1969 until his death, his acting and writing took second place to his work on behalf of UNICEF, for which he was a goodwill ambassador and fundraiser. In this role, he visited some of the neediest children and made use of his ability to make people laugh, including many of the world's most disadvantaged children. Sir Peter could make anyone laugh, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy is quoted as saying.
Ustinov died on 28 March 2004 of heart failure in a clinic in Genolier, near his home in Bursins, Switzerland, aged 82. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy spoke at his funeral, representing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Ustinov was the president of the World Federalist Movement (WFM) from 1991 to 2004, the time of his death. WFM is a global nongovernmental organization that promotes the concept of global democratic institutions. WFM lobbies those in powerful positions to establish a unified human government based on democracy and civil society. The United Nations and other world agencies would become the institutions of a World Federation. The UN would be the federal government and nation states would become similar to provinces.
Until his death, Ustinov was a member of English PEN, part of the PEN International network that campaigns for freedom of expression.
More information: UNICEF
It is our responsibilities, not ourselves,
that we should take seriously.
Peter Ustinov
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