Oscar-winning actor Sir Peter Ustinov has died in Switzerland. He was 82.
The British-born actor and noted raconteur, who had lived in Switzerland for decades, died last night.
Born in London on April 16th, 1921, the only son of a Russian artist mother and a journalist father, Ustinov claimed also to have Swiss, Ethiopian, Italian and French blood - everything except English.
Sir Peter Ustinov: died last night
He was educated at the prestigious Westminster School but hated it and left at 16. He appeared in his first revue and had his first stage play presented in London in 1940, when he was 19.
In a career lasting some 60 years, Ustinov appeared in roles ranging from Emperor Nero to Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.
He won Academy Awards for supporting actor in the films Spartacusand Topkapiin the 1960s.
More recently he was the voice of Babar the Elephant, played the role of a doctor in the film Lorenzo's Oil, and in 1999 appeared as the Walrus to Pete Postlethwaite's Carpenter in a multimillion-dollar TV movie version of Alice in Wonderland.
Ustinov faced criticism in the early 1990s for his controversial views on the emergence of Russia from Communist rule, and for his unstinting support for Mikhail Gorbachev, but his long service as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF led UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to joke that Ustinov was the man to take over from him.
No immediate details funeral arrangements were available.
AP