Peter Sellers

Written by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Peter Sellers. Photo courtesy Iconic Greats

Peter Sellers (born September 8, 1925, Southsea, England—died July 24, 1980, London) was a versatile English comic actor whose astonishing range of characters earned him international stardom at a time when rigid typecasting was usual.

Sellers was a descendant of legendary Portuguese-Jewish prizefighter Daniel Mendoza and the son of British vaudeville performers. After winning a talent contest, he planned to become a professional drummer, and as such he was hired to perform in Ralph Reader’s “gang shows”—concert units that toured British army bases during World War II. He developed his mimicry skills while serving in the Royal aaAir Force and ultimately abandoned the drums in favour of comedy, performing celebrity impressions during a six-week run at London’s Windmill Theatre. In 1951 he teamed with Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe to create The Goon Show, a radio comedy sketch series. Emerging as the star of the series with his repertoire of eccentric characters, Sellers also dominated the Goons’ film projects, including the short subject Let’s Go Crazy (1951) and the feature-length Down Among the Z Men (1952).

On his own, he played a handful of supporting film roles before his breakthrough appearance as a doltish crook in The Ladykillers (1955). Following the advice of that film’s star, Alec Guinness, Sellers strove to avoid playing the same character twice. He especially enjoyed disappearing into characters much older than himself (The Smallest Show on Earth, 1957; The Battle of the Sexes, 1959) and playing multiple roles (The Mouse That Roared, 1959). He did some of his best work for the Boulting Brothers in the late 1950s and early ’60s, notably his characterization of obstreperous inion shop steward Fred Kite in I’m All Right Jack (1959); it was also during this period that he made his feature directorial debut with Mr. Topaze (1961). Many British observers of the period dismissed Sellers as a glorified radio mimic, while Americans lauded him as a genius. One such American was director Stanley Kubrick, who cast Sellers as the treacherous Clare Quilty in Lolita (1962) and in three superbly defined roles in the brilliant “doomsday comedy” Dr. Strangelove: or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Sellers was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor for the latter film.

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove. Photo courtesy Farout

The role that earned him superstar status was the magnificently inept Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther (1963) and A Shot in the Dark (1964), both directed by Blake Edwards. The success of these projects was marred by Sellers’s near-fatal heart attack in 1964. Upon his recovery, the quality of his films became wildly erratic, his mercurial offscreen temperament reflected by the unevenness of his cinematic output. Movies from this period included What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), Casino Royale (1967), I Love You, Alice B Toklas! (1968), and There’s A Girl in My Soup (1970). He would not truly hit his stride again until the mid-1970s, when he repeated the role of Inspector Clouseau in three profitable Pink Panther sequels.

In 1979 Sellers delivered what many consider his finest performance, as the simpleminded gardener Chance in Being There. This Oscar-nominated triumph was followed by one of his worst films, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980). 

Suffering a series of heart attacks, he died at age 54. His final “performance” in Trail of the Pink Panther (released posthumously in 1982) was a hodgepodge of outtakes of outtakes from earlier films.

The Pink Panther (movie series)

The Pink Panther, British comedy film, released in 1963, that was the first and arguably the best entry in the Pink Panther film series.

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, in The Pink Panther films.
Photo courtesy Britannica

Bumbling French detective Jacques Clouseau (played by (played by Peter Sellers) is assigned to prevent the notorious villain Phantom (David Niven) from stealing a world-famous jewel known as the Pink Panther, which belongs to a princess (Claudia Cardinale) who is on holiday at an Alpine resort. The film evokes a bygone era in which screen heroes were seemingly always dressed in tuxedos and able to produce a clever witticism or seductive line for every occasion. Though the film was a comedy, Sellers’s Clouseau was not yet the over-the-top character he would later become.

Fans familiar only with the subsequent entries in the Panther series may find this initial film relatively slow moving when compared with the slapstick farces that followed. However, the Inspector Clouseau character was never intended to inspire a series, and many critics have concluded that the sophistication of this film was never equaled in the sequels. Henry Mancini’s famous jazz theme song and the pink animated cartoon panther that opens and closes the movie are integral parts of cinematic history. The Pink Pather was directed by Blake Edwards, who helmed subsequent installments. The series was later revived with Steve Martin portraying Clouseau.

First published at Britannica, September 4, 2025