Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov, CBE, born Peter Alexander von Ustinov, was an Academy Award-winning British actor, writer, dramatist and raconteur.

Childhood and early life
Ustinov was born in Swiss Cottage, London. His father, Iona (Jona) von Ustinov, known to his friends as "Klop" (bedbug), was of Russian and German descent, and had served as a German fighter pilot in World War I, 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 he began working for the British intelligence service MI5 and became a British citizen, thus avoiding internment or deportation during the war. (Peter Wright mentions in his book Spycatcher that Klop was possibly the spy known as U35; Ustinov says in his autobiography that his father hosted secret meetings of senior British and German officials at their London home.) The distinguished Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, whose father was another Ustinov, is related to this part of the family.

Peter Ustinov's mother, Nadia (Nadezhda) Leontievna Benois, was a painter and ballet designer of Russian, French and Italian ancestry. She also had Ethiopian royal ancestry. Her father Leon Benois was an imperial Russian architect and owner of Leonardo's painting Madonna Benois. His more famous brother Alexandre Benois was an outstanding stage designer who worked with Stravinsky and Diaghilev. Their paternal ancestor Jules-César Benois was a chef who had left France for St Petersburg during the French Revolution and became a chef to Tsar Paul.

Ustinov was educated at Westminster School and had a difficult and uncertain childhood because of his parents' constant bickering and personality clashes. After training as an actor in his late teens, he made his stage début in 1938 at the Players' Theatre, becoming quickly established.

Career highlights
Following military service as a private soldier during World War II, during which he had made propaganda films with actors such as David Niven, he began to branch out into writing. His first major success was with The Love of Four Colonels in 1951. His career as a dramatist continued alongside his acting career, his best-known play being Romanoff and Juliet (1956). His film roles include Roman emperor Nero in Quo Vadis? (1951), Captain Vere in Billy Budd (1962), Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus (1960), an old man surviving a totalitarian future in Logan's Run (1976), and in several films as Hercule Poirot, a part he first played in Death on the Nile (1978). 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).

He won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in Spartacus (1960) and Topkapi (1964). He also won two Golden Globe awards (he famously set the Oscar and Globe statues up on his desk as if playing doubles tennis; the game was also a love of his life, as was ocean yachting).

Between 1952 and 1955 Ustinov starred alongside Peter Jones in the much-loved BBC radio comedy In All Directions. The show featured Ustinov and Jones as themselves in a car in London perpetually searching for Copthorne Avenue. The comedy derived from the characters they met along the way, often also played by themselves. The show was unusual for the time as it was largely improvised rather than scripted. Ustinov and Jones improvised on to a tape which was then edited for broadcast by Frank Muir and Denis Norden who also sometimes took part. Possibly the favourite characters were Morris and Dudley Grosvenor, two rather stupid East End spivs who's sketches always ended with the phrase "Run for it Morry" (or Dudley as appropriate.) Sadly no recording is known to survive.

His autobiography, Dear Me (1977), was well received and saw him describe his life (ostensibly his childhood) whilst being interrogated by his own ego.

In the later part of his life (from 1969 until his death), his acting and writing tasks took second place to his work on behalf of UNICEF - the United Nations Children's Fund, 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 just about anybody 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. "His one-man show in German was the funniest performance I have ever seen – and I don’t speak a word of German."

Ustinov also served as President of the World Federalist Movement from 1991 until his death. He once said, "World Government is not only possible, it is inevitable; and when it comes, it will appeal to patriotism in its truest, in its only sense, the patriotism of men who love their national heritages so deeply that they wish to preserve them in safety for the common good".

He is most well-known to many British people as a chat-show guest, a role to which he was ideally suited - his multicultural background made it possible for him to criticise the British character with good humour. Towards the end of his life he undertook some one-man stage shows in which he let loose his raconteur streak - he told the story of his life and of his frequent alienation in British society (as just one example, he took a test as a child which asked him to name a Russian composer; he wrote Rimsky-Korsakov but was marked down, told the correct answer was Tchaikovsky since they had been studying him in class, and told to stop showing off).

He spoke English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish fluently, as well as some Turkish and modern Greek.

In the late 1960s, he became a Swiss citizen to avoid the British tax system of the time which taxed the earnings of the wealthy at up to 90 per cent. However, he was knighted in 1990, and was appointed Chancellor of the University of Durham in 1992, having previously served as Rector of the University of Dundee in the late 1970s (a role in which he moved from being merely a figure-head to taking on a political role, negotiating with militant students).

He received an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).

Ustinov was a frequent defender of the Chinese government, stating in an address to the University of Durham in 2000, "People are annoyed with the Chinese for not respecting more human rights. But with a population that size it's very difficult to have the same attitude to human rights."

In 2003, Durham's postgraduate college (previously known as the Graduate Society) was renamed Ustinov College when it moved to a new site.

He died on March 28, 2004, due to heart failure in a clinic in Genolier, near his home in Bursins, Vaud, Switzerland. He was so well regarded as a goodwill ambassador that UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy spoke at his funeral and represented United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

When, in an interview, he was once asked what he would like it to read on his tombstone, Ustinov replied "Please keep off the grass".

Amongst his lesser known works, Ustinov presented and narrated the official video review of the 1987 F1 season. His commentary proved highly entertaining.

Quotations

"Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them."

"The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought."

"I believe that the Jews have made a contribution to the human condition out of all proportion to their numbers: I believe them to be an immense people. Not only have they supplied the world with two leaders of the stature of Jesus Christ and Karl Marx, but they have even indulged in the luxury of following neither one nor the other."

"There is no question but that if Jesus Christ ... were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners."

"The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us."

"Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our one duty is to furnish it well."