Well, here we are again. Every time we hold one of these 'answer polls' to the achingly predictable 'best ever' lists that fly perennially out of various magazines, academies and fag-packet-era Channel Four programmes, we swear to ourselves we won't do any more. It's great to do just a little bit to redress the balance, we muse, but that really is enough for now. Let the media get on with their dreary round of unchanging Pet Sounds/Apocalypse Now/Bohemian Rhapsody veneration, we'll move onto healthier pastimes like go-karting or finally getting round to building that Red Baron's Fighter Plane model. But, inevitably, we find it impossible to leave well alone. Those darn polls keep coming unabated, and before long we feel driven to try and put things right ourselves. And besides, the results are often (unlike those of the Big Boys) always fascinating and surprising. And so it proves with this list of British (and cod-British, but see below) film actors, compiled to mark the publication (April 20th 2007) of TV Cream's Anatomy of Cinema: the Films that Criticism Forgot, a book dedicated to giving long-due recognition to the quietly magnificent nine tenths of film history repeatedly brushed under the carpet by mainstream critics and their attendent 'classic' polls. The book itself grew out of the films section of our weekly e-mag newscast pullout section, Creamguide, and the nomination and voting processes relied heavily on its discerning readership, who rose admirably to the task, with no snobbery, inverted, straight or over ice, guiding the choices. The only criteria we insisted on were - A) they should be either British or have done the bulk of their work in Britain, and B) their major achievements must, for the most part, have reached the Gaumonts of the nation before 1990. The good people duly obliged, and the 100 names you see below you are the fruits of this lively process. There was no chin-stroking, no canonical snobbery, and no instances (we're sure) of people voting for what they thought they ought to vote for. Some people sent us considered lists with all sorts of reasoning behind them, while one chap voted for Googie Withers because her name used to terrify him as a child. It's what you might call democracy, if you were feeling rather grand after a sherry too many. And we like to think there's never been a better, more rounded, more plain damn interesting list in the whole of Christendom. See what you think. If you've any comments, violent objections or declarations of mild bemusement at the final list (and just where is John Mills?), do please get in touch at tvctopfilms@tvctowers.co.uk.

100	VALERIE LEON Not one, but two stereotypes cling to Val - as a buxom secretary being leered at by a tubby character actor in sexcoms innumerable, and heavy-lidded otherworldly Amazon either worshipping Charles Hawtrey (Carry On Up the Jungle) or trying to do him in (Zeta One). But among all the 'Take a letter, Miss Hampton' tomfoolery, there's classier stuff, like two Bonds, and Warren Mitchell social climbing satire All the Way Up. Oh, and, er, Queen Kong of course. FINEST HOUR: A rather nifty dual role as the daughter of Andrew Kier possessed by the spirit of an Egyptian empress in Hammer's rip-roaring Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.
99	JUDY GEESON Thrown in to the ring by Kenneth J Shinn: 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush", "To Sir With Love", "Prudence And The Pill", "Percy's Progress", "Doomwatch", "Dominique" ("will make you shriek!", quoth Milton Subotsky)...although definitely NOT for "Carry On England". Throw in her starring role in, erm, "Star Maidens" (for all that that's TV) and you've got a portfolio for anyone's reckoning.' DEFINING MOMENT: 'Getting rogered by a garden hose filled with Fairy Liquid in "Inseminoid". Try and remember her any other way (apart from Carry On England). But alas, it's hard - for better or worse, this is her iconic moment.'
98	SAM KYDD When you get to people like the lanky, squash-nosed Sam Kydd, you're in vague territory. No-one's quite sure exactly how many films the man appeared in (including the man himself when he was still with us). The better part of 200 is as impressive a conservative estimate as any, though. Soldiers and soppers figured large in the ex-big band MC's oeuvre, with a side-order of criminal sidekicks and waistcoat-wearing shifties of no fixed abode thrown in for balance. FINEST HOUR: In creaky yet oddly atmospheric Planet horror Island of Terror, as a copper discovering just what those crawling, bone-dissolving Sillicates can do.
97	MARIANNE STONE This is little exercise all about exploring the lower ends of the bill as the stars of course, and Marianne Stone, veteran of nearly 200 films and never ranking higher than tenth place in the credits of any of them, has become our talisman for the hard-working bit-part actor. You name the unglamorous part, she's played it: secretaries, charwomen, mad old bats, reporters, waitresses, 'women in pub' and so on. You've seen at least a dozen of her films, even if you don't know it. FINEST HOUR: The first victim of Jack the Ripper in the eponymous film, chatting animatedly to an organ grinder's monkey before the Gladstone bag emerges from the pea soup.
96	CHARLES 'BUD' TINGWELL Let’s be perfectly blunt here; if a film doesn’t have Bud Tingwell in it, then it isn’t a proper Australian film. Even Bill Hunter taking part makes it only slightly Ozzie at best. But with Charles in charge, we’ve got some proper Ocker product to enjoy. Bud made his name elsewhere than Australia of course, mostly because in the years following the war the only people to impress with your acting displays down there were people who were pissed off that you weren’t Chips Rafferty. So like Peter Finch and the great Bill Kerr it was to the UK that Bud came to make his name. Securing the role of Inspector Craddock in the ace MGM Marples with Dame Mags Rutherford and after that, well, if there’s an Australian accent in evidence then he’s bound to be in it somewhere. If it’s any good that is. FINEST HOUR: As the retired barrister having one last tip at the windmills of bureaucracy in excellent moronic masterpiece The Castle.
95	GOOGIE WITHERS Picked out of the crowd to replace a co-star in, er, A Girl in the Crowd - possibly the least believable showbiz anecdote ever, and therefore blatantly true - Googie caught the characteristic British actress technique of the prim smoulder as Margs Lockwood's chum in The Lady Vanishes, added a dash of fortitude to the mix with One of Our Aircraft is missing and The Silver Fleet, and was cuckolded by fishtailed Glynis Johns in Miranda. Later came a telly dotage of prison dramas, being interrupted by yogurt-mad puppets ('There, you can see her there') and supplying the punchline to at least one late item of Two Ronnies news. FINEST HOUR: Well, it has to be Ralph Michael's smugly married wife turned victim of a haunted mirror in the film they couldn't shut up about, Dead of Night.
94	VALENTINE DYALL Rightly revered for his sonorous 'Tomorrow's New Yesterday' radio voice, on screen Dyall started out during wartime playing stock Nazis in Colonel Blimp, The Silver Fleet and so forth. Demob redemption came via various official characters and a bit of friendly advice to Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter, before The Night Comes too Soon, exorcising ghosts from Anne Howard's house under the double-take name of Dr George Clinton. Spookiness kept going via a Man in Black film (with Sid James to the fore), Gothic oddity Corridor of Mirrors (With Christopher Lee at the back), and a hypnotic turn as Dr Morelle (with Hugh Griffith opening and closing doors). FINEST HOUR: Ooh, what to pick? The voice of God in Bedazzled? The Wrong Box, The werewolf break in the beast Must Die? Delivering 'ambassador-class lunches' to Britannia Hospital and breaking into Auld Lang Syne for no reason at all? Nah, it has to be his multi-role amazement as part of the ragged rep company mugging their way through Spike Milligan's immortally unfathomable The Great MacGonagall. An African message runner, a dandy and Alfred Lord Tennyson all in 90 minutes? Beat that!
93	DINSDALE LANDEN Oozing charm from every pore he oiled his way across the floor, to purloin a phrase from a small time musical, Dinsdale was for many years the choice embodiment of the officious but unmistakeably sadistic bastard in usually small scale features. As the casually aggressive Colonel in Digby the Biggest Dog in the World or as the similarly awful Commander in Morons from Outer Space he made a speciality, for a while at least, of what might be called the Lethbridge-Stewart School of furrowed brow and clipped consonant frontage with no trace or semblance of intelligence behind the moustache. Either that he was a Vicar but to the same eventual effect. FINEST HOUR: probably shooting fuzzy wuzzies in Young Winston but actually tracking down secret service sleepers in 1973 Thriller episode An Echo of Theresa. Why no Matthew Earp film franchise then?
92	SEAN CONNERY Surprisingly low, you say? Maybe so. Anyway, one thing's for sure, it's a pain writing billings for the more well-known stars, as you'll know everything already. ('A milkman, you say? Well, never in all my born days!') He's all a-grump these days in his tax haven, but at his peak he was untouchable, and no-one has yet worked out quite why. Terry Gilliam knew that just having Sean Connery in his film for a day of shooting was worth the price of admission. How the old sod does it we'll never know. FINEST HOUR: Getting all bleedin' high and bloody mighty as The Man Who Would be King.
91	MICHAEL CAINE Not one for our own personal Hall of Fame, but nominations came in from several friends of the Unusual Stain, including Steve Roundwood, who opines: 'Yes he gets stick for some of his roles and rightly so, but The Ipcress File shows he's more than a pair of glasses and a frown. He deserves a nod for Zulu too in my opinion.' You've convinced us, son - in he goes. FINEST HOUR: Even we have to admit his flint-eyed gangster bent on Tyneside revenge in Get Carter is well nigh unforgettable.
90	NORMAN ROSSINGTON Earmarked for on-screen military service having come to the cinema via The Army Game, the generously-chinned Liverpudlian nevertheless amassed a varied career in his time. Steward on board the Titanic, strip show bouncer in Doctor in Love, fire engine thief in Go to Blazes, germ warfare custodian in The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer. Been there, done that, our Norm. FINEST HOUR: As, well, 'Norm', managing The Beatles (just about) in A Hard Day's Night.
89	MARIUS GORING Crypto-European man of letters who, when he wasn't helping Powell and Pressburger with dialogue, divided his time between upper crust British types and Germanic military figures. Pathos abounds: his sad old schoolmaster shown up by his thrusting young rival in Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, or his Ava Gardner-coveting Italian millionaire in The Barefoot Contessa. His later career dotage of 'Nazi for hire' runs was ameliorated by his excellent fascist reptile expert in The Old Men at the Zoo, about which we shall not shut up, even if it is strictly telly. FINEST HOUR: Moira Shearer's love interest - and so much more - in The Red Shoes.
88	DERYCK GUYLER It's not easy to make a successful career out of being a grumpy, permanently annoyed buffoon. Just ask John Prescott [SATIRE] but it came easy to Liverpool's finest contribution to the gallery of supporting players. Blessed with that voice, described accurately by Sykes as "magnificent", Guyler was able to mould words around his frighteningly big choppers to make them come out as pompous as cretinous as only the sort of films he was in could require of him. A Day to Remember gave him the opportunity start as meant to go on as Angry Man In Ferry Queue and by the time he hit his stride in the likes of the pleasingly naively titled Mad About Men, A Hard Day's Night alongside some strolling minstrels, Nurse On Wheels and No Sex Please, We're British he was well established as the idiot du jour, and for many more jours too. FINEST HOUR: living out the part of Norman 'I was a Desert Rat' Potter in film version of Please, Sir!
87	CLAIRE BLOOM Stuffy old film lore has her pudding-proving moment down as her depressed ballerina to C Chaplin's down and out comic in Limelight, but we know the real test came the following year, when she was one of the magnificent seven who descended on an unsuspecting French capital in Innocents in Paris, and held her own with the veteran likes of Alistair Sim, Jimmy Edwards and Margaret Rutherford. From then on, it's motorway all the way: Look back in Anger, The Buccaneer, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Charly, The Illustrated Man... you get the picture. The presence of the odd misfire, such as her alky nympho in ludicrous Kinsey Report 'dramatisation' The Chapman Report, merely add to the overall impression of a first rate job of screen work. FINEST HOUR: 'What would you call this place? Funorama?' Yes, her clairvoyant lesbian in superlative old dark house nightmare The Haunting is well nigh unmatchable.
86	BILL FRASER Not many film actors can say they have come to the sound stage from a position of pre-eminence in not only the legitimately boring and expensive stage but also telly and radio. Bill Fraser did that. Having also saved Eric Sykes' life and been present at Thora Hird's first film audition, he went on to take part in some really cracking stuff. And some pretty diabolical stuff. But in either case, he was good whatever the weather. Schtick like Bootsie and Snudge predating romp Orders Are Orders, pleasing tittle tattle The Fast Lady, fondly remembered A Home of Your Own and the extraordinary I've Gotta Horse were enough to ensure his craggy and permanently annoyed features were a welcome addition to anything. More politically incorrect that Hitler's slightly racist uncle, Love Thy Neighbour, won't win him any credibility points but then the frankly demented That's Your Funeral would have knocked that on the head in any case. Always interesting, and grumpy, and always worth a look Bill Fraser was a titan of a man who ought to have been given more to do. And an Oscar - for anything, The Amorous Milkman, say - just because someone like Bill Fraser at the Shriners Auditorium in a winning capacity would have helped maintain the balance toward the sunny side of the street that bit more easily. FINEST HOUR: As Prosperus Maximus showing no deco-rum in the fo-rum.
85	JOAN COLLINS We're thinking of her pre-soap career here, of course. The Joan who played an assortment of cockney teenage tarts in various downmarket 'social problem' shockers. The Joan who simultaneously balanced a giant wig on her head and struggled to hold a large emerald in her navel in land of the Pharaohs. The Joan who played herself, breaking up with hubby Anthony Newley, in hubby Anthony Newley's self-indulgent biopic, while they were breaking up for real. The Joan who would fight a papier mache ant or a papier mache walking tree in the name of horror. There's so much more than the quarterback-shouldered image of today. FINEST HOUR: The elusive object of Tom Bell's desire in two parallel incarnations in Quest for Love.
84	LYNN REDGRAVE Our favourite member of the all-conquering Redgrave dynasty. Despite being born into the very top of the acting aristocracy, Lynn never quite fitted in. Hence she was perfect for Georgy Girl, a masterful study of swinging square-peggery, which just wouldn't have been anywhere near as good if, as was originally intended, big sis Vanessa had taken the part. After that, 'gawkily vivacious' was the order of the day in such fare as Virgin Soldiers and The Happy Hooker, with lashings of more out-there fare, like moping round a Mississippi mansion with a wedding dress-wearing James Coburn in Last of the Mobile Hotshots, or her predatory fashion designer in top disaster spoof The Big Bus. FINEST HOUR: Why, trashing the up-itself fag-end of Swinging London with Rita Tushingham in Smashing Time, of course!
83	PEGGY MOUNT If Margaret Rutherford was the female equivalent of a galleon in full sail, Peggy Mount was the Bismarck. In the films she made she was a brilliant presence thrashing her way through her surroundings with all the subtlety of a brickworks. Best of all was her turn in excellent and underrated The Naked Truth, desperately trying to purloin a Mickey Finn to deal with blackmailer Dennis Price and completely eclipsing co-star Peter Sellers in the process; no mean feat. Hotel Paradiso and Oliver! make hers a career worth looking at a bit more closely. Especially for the salient fact that she was brilliant at what she did. FINEST HOUR: Thundering into a low tavern in The Naked Truth, forgetting to drop the jolly hockey sticks persona and suddenly coming across like a giant scrubber, a masterpiece in moments. "Gin and lime please! Erm...port and lemon."
82	BERYL REID It's like conducting a clandestine affair. There's Our Beryl, dear old comedy actress of Two-Way Stretch and St Trinian's fame, all prim and proper and scones for tea. And then you have, after lights-out, she transforms into a sadistic crypto-lesbian telly nun in The Killing of Sister George, the female third of a triangular mock marriage in Entertaining Mr Sloane, and of course a toad-worshipping immortal Satanist with an unfeasibly groovy front room in undead biker romp Psychomania. How many agents can one actress have? FINEST HOUR: Mucking in with the bawdy period goings-on in Joseph Andrews, as waiting gentlewoman to Ann-Margret's overblown society tart Lady Booby.
81	MARGARET LOCKWOOD It's hard now to appreciate how 'naughty' the Gainsborough Girls were in their day. Heaving bosoms had to be snipped out for American release. Cat fights took place on British soil for the first time since Queen Mary's day. They were the country's first bona fide film stars, and Margs was a star amongst them. From dandy highwaywomen to troubled clairvoyants, from overseeing Ruritanian weddings in the Slipper and the Rose to getting a pie in the face from historical Sid Field comedy Cardboard Cavalier, she was one of the best stars we ever had. FINEST HOUR: Do you know, we find it almost impossible to choose between The Wicked Lady and The Lady Vanishes. So we won't.
80	RITA TUSHINGHAM Hard to believe she started off on celluloid as the 'if wet' Audrey Hepburn, after the latter's 'people' baulked at the rum goings-on within Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey and demanded a sweetness-and-light replacement ending more in tune with La Hep's star persona. And so, wisely, Rita was hired, and a '60s-defining career set in motion: The Leather Boys, Girl with Green Eyes, The Knack and How to Get It and, inevitably, Smashing Time. Even in Endsleigh League caper comedy Diamonds for Breakfast, she proves too many kooks can only improve the cinematic broth. FINEST HOUR: Hard pressed to beat The Knack we feel. Anyone prepared to run around a Maida Vale front room while Ray Brooks whips them with his belt deserves whatever awards we can fling at them, and quite possibly a month off, too.
79	JOHN LAURIE Ah, you can hear the lazy terminology here: 'craggy', 'brooding', etc., like the harsh, rugged landscape of his native... But sod all that. Laurie was 'brooding' on screen from the coming of sound to the coming of Thatcher, and that's time enough to vary the Pvt. Frazer diet just a wee bit. (Christ, we're doing it now). Try Blind Pew in Treasure Island, or brothel proprietor William Hopwood in Fanny by Gaslight. Better yet, one of the pub-bound victims of leather-clad Patricia Laffan's Scottish invasion in Devil Girl from Mars. FINEST HOUR: Well before craggy stereotyping set in, as last of the Foula fishermen Peter Manson, driven over The Edge of the World.
78	ROBERT POWELL Early bit parts in assorted Butcher's tripe and playing a headachey wimp in The Italian Job might rank among the least auspicious of film career beginnings but, after a proper telly apprenticeship (including three top notch Wednesday Plays) Powell got started on the good stuff. Perfectly suited to oddball horrors like Asylum and The Asphyx, and holding his own in the odd Ken Russell wig-out, the way was paved for dangling off Big Ben in The Thirty Nine Steps (Big Ben Edition), in a bid to purge his 'sensitive young man' image. But there's always been a quiet menace behind those delicate cheekbones, and the Pan's Hubby can do sinister with the best of them. FINEST HOUR: Never mind Jesus, his multi-costume turn in Australian horror Harlequin captures that otherworldly side of Powell better than anything.
77	MICHAEL ELPHICK Being remembered only for Withnail & I is a brutal testament. PolPot might be more pleased with his legacy. But unfortunately for the great Elphick, one of the most genuinely original and brilliant telly stars of the last 30 years, that benighted old Penrith-bound toot is about it as far as fame at the pictures goes. That’s a real shame though as Mike was involved in a lot more interesting stuff than that. When Diddy David Lynch wanted a sadistic ham-fisted bastard to give John Hurt a hard time in The Elephant Man it was an actual stroke of genius, not a trait easily attributed to Lynch at the best of times, to put Elphick in there. It’s no simple matter to act hard and cruel and not be all nimminy-pimminy, like some RADA encrusted offstage Nazi. But Elphick could do it quite easily. Comfy lawn-based whimsy Arthur’s Hallowed Ground rubbed shoulders effortlessly with Polanski wank Pirates and the nearest cinematic equivalent to the death of a thousand cuts, Little Dorrit. Krull and Gorky park provide some more interesting range and indeed his part as Jake the poacher in Withnail does at least demonstrate comfortably that he was prepared to appear in shit in order to help out a mate. FINEST HOUR: As the frighteningly real and sadistic Sergeant to Marxist officer John Cleese in HandMade’s version of Peter Nicol’s terribly-jolly-except-for-the-last-ten-minutes Privates on Parade.
76	DEBORAH KERR One of those stars who, if it wasn't for the fact she's so often ignored these days, we'd think twice about putting in this list, so numerous are her famous roles: From Here to Eternity, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Quo Vadis and, of course, The King and I. But there's more to it than the Halliwell-approved canon. Innocent wife of occult vintner David Niven in Eye of the Devil. Grieving wife of John Huston's M in Casino Royale, making a terrible wig-based pun. And, natch, finding her contraceptives watered down in swinging sexcom Prudence and the Pill. The full run of the counter and no mistake. FINEST HOUR: Getting away from Niven-based matrimony for once, in Jack Cardiff's painted-on Himalayan retreat in the magnificent Black Narcissus.
75	DAVID HEMMINGS We've neither the time nor the sufficient number of decimal places to calculate exactly how many 'Faces of the Sxties', male and female, there actually were in total, but surely The Hem gets into the top ten of that overcrowded field. He started off opposite Billy Bunter of course, but we gloss over that to his early roles, where he always seemed to be forming a pop band (Some People, Live It Up!, Be My Guest etc.) Then came Blow Up, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Barbarella, and a much mocked star (we're thinking of Monty Python's 'piece of wood' jibe in particular) was born. And directing episodes of Airwolf and all! Plus! We've never heard his album, David Hemmings Happens, but how can it be anything less than great? FINEST HOUR: Ooh, there's loads. Richard Harris's number two in Juggernaut. Kidnapping Carol White in sorely underrated underworld oddity The Squeeze, opposite Stacy Keach and Freddie Starr. But the sustained brilliance biscuit goes to his scared schoolteacher John Ebony in the mesmerising Unman, Wittering and Zigo.
74	PATRICK MAGEE Another of those actors who did films 'purely' to subsidise their more important work on the stage, but such snobbery is by the by when you can boast having forced Nigel Patrick down a tunnel lined with razor blades (Tales from the Crypt), chatted fart about Zen into an open reel tape recorder (The Final Programme), played the father of 'Humgoo' lesley Dunlop (The Monster Club) and joined Vincent Price in an orgy of entry-level debauchery (Masque of the Red Death)? We think that just about balances things out. FINEST HOUR: Let's meet the mad-eyed old bugger halfway, and big up his debauched bishop in highly-respected Pinter doings The Servant.
73	SYLVIA SYMS 'She's a doll! She's a dish! She's a delinquent!' Yep, Sylv's early break as the wild child daughter of Anna Neagle in My Teenage Daughter is a cinematic touchstone for us, being as it is a Brit teenage film, a rather good Brit teenage film, and a rather good Brit teenage film with Sylvia Syms in respectively. Tony Britton was, er, smitten with her in The Birthday Present. She oversaw *that* lager consumption in Ice Cold in Alex. She was sliced up and dumped in a deep freeze in Asylum. And more recently, she was the Queen Mum. Budge up on the Varied Career bench, everyone! FINEST HOUR: Well, not Absolute Beginners, that's for sure. Ach, we'll plump for My Teenage Daughter. Looking surly in a big frilly skirt is pure cinema.
72	DINAH SHERIDAN Jenny Hanley's mum. Started in small, unglamorous roles, possibly the least gitzy of which was as George Formby's cleaning lady. Paul Temple. Jane Huggett. 'The quintessential English rose.' Made it big with *that* inadvertent Spoonerism in Genevieve. Oddly enough, did little after that for ages until The Railway Children and maternal vocabulary correction galore. The Mirror Crack'd. Don't Wait Up. Did we miss anything out? FINEST HOUR: People will think we're obsessed if we pick The Railway Children again. Er...
71	SUSAN PENHALIGON From the off, she was pretty much the embodiment of the all-new, empowered yet still slightly floaty post-'60s middle class lady with a first name ending in '-ny', naffing the hell out of Esher to shack up with boho Bruce Robinson in Private Road. Then came that star-studded Under Milk Wood film, porn panic pratfest No Sex Please: We're British, literary sell-out allegory The Last Chapter and of course McClure-in-a-U-boat rubberfest The Land the Time Forgot. FINEST HOUR: A toss-up between two horrors - a nurse coveted by a telekinetic mental patient in the Australian weird-in Patrick, and in peril from Anthony Sharp's priest in Pete Walker's House of Mortal Sin.
70	ALFIE BASS There's nothing wrong with an actor specialising, if he does it well. And when it came to short, Jewish cockneys with an air of dodginess about them, Alfie Bass was the specialist's specialist. Shorty, Basher, Dicey Perkins... Alfie's career built film by film into a rogue's gallery of cons exhibiting various degrees of lovability and competence. He also had a sideline in looking on in slack-jawed bewilderment at the antics of Roger Moore in Moonraker. FINEST HOUR: Coveting the eponymous tailored garment to his ultimate doom in Oscar-winning short The Bespoke Overcoat.
69	WILLIAM FRANKLYN We'll ignore that damn tonic water catchphrase (tempting though, isn't it?) and celebrate the screen's smoothest operator this side of Peter Bowles for his many films instead. A trick of the memory casts him as an MI5 operative most of the time, but other than The Intelligence Men, that's down to the telly likes of Master Spy. He did, however, play an amnesiac safe-maker in Pit of Darkness, a rare gem from the cut-price Butcher's stable. At the other end of the scale, a dandy highwayman in lovely old Regal swashbuckler Fury at Smugglers' Bay. FINEST HOUR: As the effortlessly suave Cecil, putting the nervy Donald Pleasence on the spot when he calls round for drinks in Cul-de-Sac.
68	SUSANNAH YORK You don't argue with Superman's mum of course, but if there was ever an odder CV among these nominees we'd like to know about it. Curling up with Coral Browne in The Killing of Sister George, strange Robert Altman crack-up study Images, terrorists-vs-hang-gliders nonsense Sky Riders, robbing a London bank via the sewers in Loophole, shipwrecked in Australia with Trevor Howard in The Adventures of Eliza Fraser, accomplice to Warren Beatty's swinging Riviera poker ace in Kaleidoscope, death by defenestration in the Awakening and running around naked on all fours in borderline-mad horror The Shout. Not a career for the faint-hearted. FINEST HOUR: Codebreaking colleague and lover to Dirk Bogarde in Sebastian, the swingingest cryptography film ever made.
67	JULIE CHRISTIE Well, we could just sit here listing titles, couldn't we? Dr Zhivago, Billy Liar, Darling, Don't Look Now... big time roles were Julie's for the taking, so perhaps we should take those as read and examine her 'other stuff', because that's if anything even better. Her stripper trying to coax Leslie Phillips into going straight in Crooks Anonymous. Her distracted post-apocalyptic turn in the well nigh impenetrable Memoirs of a Survivor. And almost single-handedly stopping The Demon Seed from being quite as unspeakably silly as it ought to be. This sort of stuff is harder than it looks. FINEST HOUR: Glam and funny with it as sports car obsessed Claire Chingford, teaching Stanley baxter to drive in the magisterial The Fast Lady.
66	JAMES MASON His stentorian bronchial tones have been the source material for a thousand shite after dinner impressions, but no matter, for his on-screen spectre remains undiminished by such drawing room frippery, and remains a mere slapped maiden or fireplace-aimed goblet away from decidedly unpleasant immortality. What he lacked in capacity for frivolous on-set hijinks he more than made up for in Brooding Malevolence (copyright Sight and Sound), and when you've got James Leamington, Humbert Humbert, Van Damm, Rommel (twice!) and those mighty Gainsboroughs under your belt, the odd duffer here and there (look folks, it's The Water Babies from Brazil!) matters not one jot. FINEST HOUR: Hmm, what to choose? Be a bit saucy and pick Murder by Decree? Be a bit willfully obscure and plump for the London Nobody Knows? Be a bit clueless and go for Heaven Can Wait? Well, since we've used up our Gainsborough ration for this enterprise, it has to be - yes, enough with the 'best booter!' terrace chanting - that Bible-bashing patriarch in Spring and Port Wine.
65	DORA BRYAN As luck would have it, Dora's main line of work - never knowingly overscrubbed ladies from the wrong side of the dog track - developed in British film as she did, as early caricature cockney concubines in The Fallen Idol and The Blue Lamp gave way to A Taste of Honey. In between was her, ahem, 'favour acquiring' headmistress in The Great St Trinians Train Robbery, and the irritant sidekick to Glynis Johns's mermaid in Mad About Men. And hers was the hotel featured in Carry On Girls, to boot! FINEST HOUR: Has to be Rita Tushingham's boozy mum and walking 'biological phenomena' in A Taste of Honey.
64	ALAN BATES Oh, great. This billing will be like summarising Proust, won't it? Er... dancing sideways on with Anthony Quinn... not being Jesus in a barn despite what Hayley Mills reckons... getting June Ritchie up the duff... sending secret notes to Julie Christie at the turn of the century... teaching books he hasn’t read to Patti Love... freaking John Hurt out with his deadly aboriginal mouth noises... and, of course, that marvellous scene by the fire. FINEST HOUR: Oh, do we have to pick one? Consider the wind whistled down, then.
63	MICHAEL REDGRAVE Difficult to imagine Sir Michael leaping about on a chat show sofa at the height of his fame, but then in those days there wasn't such a boringly tight definition of how stars should be. Never really loved by the public, he still got their respect, by that old actor's trick: being any good. And now you know the rest of the story. The Stars Look Down, The Lady Vanishes, The Dambusters, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner among his famous roles; The Night My Number Came Up, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Hill among our favourites. FINEST HOUR: Let's unashamedly plump for sinister ventriloquist Maxwell Frere in the final, bed-moistening segment of Dead of Night. No-one who's seen that final close-up of him in the cell will dispute that choice, we're sure.
62	ALAN BADEL The ex-French Resistance fighter was only in films for the money, he reckoned, but if that's the case he picked his cash cows better than most 'serious' film actors in quality terms. Starting as he meant to go on with his unforgettable role as an eccentric, childlike arrival in Windsor with a sinister motive in The Stranger Left No Card, Badel always seemed to command the screen at one inscrutable remove from the rest of the cast, and two from the audience. Hence his rugby team owner in This Sporting Life, his villainous oil magnate in Arabesque, his corrupt South American president in The Adventurers. A man for all jobs, except perhaps babysitting. FINEST HOUR: Chilling folk witless in all three segments of priceless portmanteau horror Three Cases of Murder, but especially as the sinister artist of In the Picture.
61	DENNIS PRICE No-one really knew quite what to do with Dennis Price, did they? The poshly sardonic one never fitted in at the House of Gainsborough, despite many an attempt to get him into melodramatic breeches. The famously disastrous The Bad Lord Byron, with Price as the poet being judged by some kind of celestial court martial, didn't do him any favours, either. Even his desultory dotage cameos (shouting 'Fire Ferrett!' in Michael Rimmer, having a perverted school uniform fetish in Barry MacKenzie, even being dragged behind a galloping horse in Theatre of Blood) were better viewing. Fortunately enough people got him right in the end: his arms dealer in I'm All Right Jack, his car salesman in School for Scoundrels, and his beatnik in awe of Hancock's Shapism in The Rebel all hit the sour spot. FINEST HOUR: Well, there can only be one. 'My memoirs!' We don't even have to ask for it by name, do we?
60	ALBERT FINNEY If you're going to set up your own production company, make it a punning one. And so Albert did, his Memorial Enterprises blasting out a few classics from If... to Privilege to Spring and Port Wine. The only one with Finney in, Charlie Bubbles, was a bit of a mess, but the ambitious point holds. All roles considered must hang above Finney's door. Arthur Seaton and Ebenezer Scrooge. Gangland boss in Miller's Crossing and Pope John Paul II. Hercule Poirot and Tom Jones. Where exactly his turn in Looker fits into all this is unclear. And maybe that's the point. FINEST HOUR: Living the dream and way out of his depth as Eddie Ginley in Gumshoe.
59	WARREN MITCHELL Again, with your kind permission we'll respectfully agree to knock *that* role on the head for our purposes and delve into the wide and wonderful range of pre-Till Death... European accents from which the former Radio Luxembourg jock fashioned his filmic living. From Italy (Carry On Cleo) to Spain (Curse of the Werewolf), from Russia (Diamonds for Breakfast) to... er, somewhere of indeterminate Germanic origin (we're thinking his demented European prof in eyeballtastic cheapie The Trollenberg Terror here, as you may have guessed), that cantankerous intransigence and manic intensity that was later to acquire a cockney lilt was in plentiful supply from the off. FINEST HOUR: Relishing every line as monocled, Moonopoly-playing bastard billionaire JJ '100%' Hubbard in Moon Zero Two.
58	VLADEK SHEYBAL The lugubrious-visaged Polish émigré left Andrez Wajda and pals behind to make a fine living being sinister in British and American films. Starting in fine style as brooding chess grandmaster Kronsteen in From Russia With Love, and carrying on with Mosquito Squadron, Women in Love, Billion Dollar Brain et al. Also a fine sideline in telly villains in the likes of Smiley's People, making him possibly the personification of '60s/'70s Cold War discomfort. FINEST HOUR: In little-seen Avengers-esque Cold War thriller The Limbo Line, cutting a dark swathe through the endless groovy pads and roll-neck sweaters as ice cold defector-recapturer Oleg.
57	MAURICE DENHAM Who new the young man who put the lifts in at Broadcasting House would go on to forge a formidable line in sadistic men of science (Fame is the Spur), bumpkin coppers (Poet's Pub), a loopy escaped Nazi (semi-canonical Charters and Coldicott romp It's Not Cricket) and French generals (Day of the Jackal). His diary was as full in the '70s and '80s as it was in the '40s, a testament to a versatile career. FINEST HOUR: Voicing the whole damn show on his own in Animal Farm.
56	JACK HAWKINS From pantomime elf to captain of the Compass Rose, Jack Hawkins was one of those actors who looked to the stage first, and affected a benign bemusement at his own celluloid popularity. But a star he was, though a multifarious one, swapping from police superintendents to Egyption Pharaohs at the drop of a helmet. A stoic among stoics, his breakthrough picture The Cruel Sea came despite debilitating seasickness. Cancer robbed him of his voice at the end, so what later performances there were had to be dubbed by Charles Gray ('Willard White speakin'!') FINEST HOUR: Let's not try and be clever here. The major of that 'rather rum group' who set out to destroy The Bridge on the River Kwai is as fine an hour as ever was had.
55	GORDON JACKSON A man for all seasons, but preferably with grumpiness involved. Gord's memory lives on via the Upstairs, Downstairs/Professionals telly double, for sure, but there's far more going on than mere tough talk if you delve a little deeper. Would you believe, presenting Children's Hour? And possibly uniquely among the actors listed here, there was no jobbing bit-partery for the nascent Jackson. No, it was straight into the co-lead, with Tommy Trinder as half of a duo of AWOL squaddies in the excellent The Foreman Went to France. After tha,t he packed in drawing up Rolls-Royce blueprints and the rest is film history. Whisky Galore!, Quatermass, Hell Drivers, The Great Escape... not a bad haul, all told. FINEST HOUR: Foreman, we say. Why can't his first be his best? No shame in that when the film's so great.
54	GEOFFREY BAYLDON Ken Shinn nominates everyone's favourite crazy old duffer, 'on the strength of his demented mirth in Asylum alone. Throw in such other roles as his sympathetic Rev Philip Moss in Sky West And Crooked, the austere Prison Governor in Porridge, and his charming Ernest Thesiger homage as Theo von Hartmann in The House That Dripped Blood, and his case looks all the stronger.' FINEST HOUR: 'The two clinchers? He's the man who gave us the second-only-to-Llewellyn portrayal of Q in the real Casino Royale ("it's not for me, it's for the Official Secrets Act") AND buried Albert in Steptoe And Son Ride Again.'
53	ESMA CANNON Short, middle-aged feisty eccentrics were the speciality of this Australian-born mockney lass, although she wasn't limited to parts such as the doggedly defiant Flo in Carry On Cabby, being convincingly terrorised by Peggy Mount in Sailor Beware, and hauntingly mute as Lindy, the unwilling partner in crime of Margaret Lockwood's Jassy. But usually, if there's an Elsie, and Effie or a Flo in a Britcom of a certain vintage, and no-one telling *her* how to behave, you'll often as not find Esma under the headscarf. FINEST HOUR: The batty spinster playing table tennis with a flagging Kenneth Williams in Carry on Cruising.
52	MICHAEL RIPPER As nominated by one CCB, who explains: 'A quick glance down the roles he played from 1936 to 1991 indicate that while never in top billing, indeed rarely in billing at all, he was clearly a stalwart of the British Film Industry. Hail to the man who played : The Third Store Employee (Carrying Packages) in The History of Mr Polly, The Liftman in Blue Murder At *and* The Pure Hell of St Trinian's *and* the Great St Trinian's Train Robbery, The Gateman in Sammy's Super T-Shirt as well as countless other definite-articled parts. Ripper had a foot in all the camps of British Cinema - Shakespeare, Drawing Room Comedy, Bawdy Comedy, Hammer Horror (he appeared in more Hammer productions than anyone else) and was a familiar face on the telly too.' FINEST HOUR: 'For a man whose lot in life was to play the ordinary man, it's only fitting that his greatest moment comes in pre-Hard Day's Night pop-flick "What A Crazy World" in which Ripper plays "The Common Man" and turns up, like a Greek chorus in various locations and situations. He doesn't actually have anything plot-driving to say or do, he's just there. A fitting testament to a man who, be it Mummy's Tomb, Pirate Ship, department store or suburban house, was just there.'
51	STAN LAUREL Easily forgotten (by Americans, at least) that he was an Ulverston lad, but the heavy reliance that Hollywood film comedy had on the British music hall thanks to ex-pats like Stan and Chaplin means we can regard the man's multifarious triumphs as British through and through, Hal Roach or no Hal Roach. Ever as humble as he was dedicated, he came up with set-pieces and bits of business for loads of their classics, without an on-screen credit. Anyway, do we have to rehearse the glue-brush-in-face, piano-down-stairs, fresh-fish-hooting brilliance of the man? He was quite simply comedy personified, from soup to hardboiled eggs and nuts. FINEST HOUR: It's neither original, nor especially big or clever, but just look at that soft shoe shuffle in Way Out West. Just look at it!
50	LIZ FRASER Many fine film careers began with the smallest of parts in The Smallest Show on Earth, and Liz is no exception, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Leslie Phillips and June Cunningham in that crumbling fleapit. She went on to sum up an era, playing wholesomely glamorous girls of slender means, just as such women were starting to make inroads into popular culture. A fulsome roll-call stretching from Up the Junction to Confessions of a Driving Instructor followed. FINEST HOUR: Starring alongside Sid James in underrated narrow boat farce Double Bunk, and singing that film's sprightly title ditty along with Sid to boot. Once heard, never forgotten.
49	ROBERT MORLEY Blustering, mincing, nincompooperising, looking askance down the nose (if that's possible)... No-one said a character actor had to choose likeable parts, and Morley, a mensch by every account going in real life, took the camply dislikeable into new realms of fruity unpleasantness. From dotty manchild gadget freak Cedric Page in Topkapi to hopeless computer programmer Caesar Smith in Hot Millions, Morley commands respect with his mastery of roles that, er, command no respect at all. Look, we know what we mean. FINEST HOUR: We'd love to sneak his iconic Lord Godmanchester from The Old Men at the Zoo in here, but we've got to stick to films, so: well, the Christmas-camp, poodle-toting critic Meredith Merridew in Theatre of Blood, and whyever not?
48	DAVID NIVEN Very possibly the only bounder to make it to full National Treasure status (though Nigel Havers - who funnily enough played Niven in that half-cocked Peter Sellers biopic - is coming close, we feel). Not given the recognition he deserves thanks to the latter stages of his career being associated with big-budget silliness (Around the World in 80 Days, Casino Royale, The Brain, Murder By Death etc.) which we rather like. Well, apart from Vampira and those posthumous Pink Panthers, perhaps. But never mind them, he was always great. Wonder if he knew any anecdotes? FINEST HOUR: Be honest, you want us to bung A Matter of Life and Death down here, and we're not going to disappoint.
47	AUDREY HEPBURN Much more than a smart way to shut up bores who demand a list of famous Belgians, Aud quickly moved up the pecking order from trilling 'fancy a ciggie?' in Laughter in Paradise to being adored by the whole of Rome (and a pratfalling Eddie Albert) in two short years. The gamine-for-a-laugh waif did the 'iconic' bit with the fag holder and the guitar strumming in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and not really singing in My Fair Lady, of course. That money's safe. But those who don't pause to consider the caper-chase double whammy of Charade and the gloriously oddball How to Steal a Million are missing the whole picture as they peruse their coffee table books full of elbow-length gloves and tiaras. FINEST HOUR: Comic asides and much-much more with Sean Connery's middle-age spread hero in Richard Lester’s fantastic Robin and Marian show her deceptive subtlety off as well as anything. it's like she'd never been away!
46	TREVOR HOWARD 'I've been number two in films for donkey's years,' quoth the stalwart support actor's stalwart support actor, and he was right. Not that, whatever Trev himself may have thought of this state of affairs, there's anything wrong with that. Of course the knee-jerk thought is of the war, with taut squadron leaders and clandestine platform trysts with Celia Johnson. But then you've got his top turn in The Third Man, which for our money is as good as anything in the picture, although of course he didn't get to say 'cuckoo' in a funny way with his eyebrows raised, so it went largely unheralded. You've got him ruthlessly epitomising the hypocritically morally outraged gentry in The Missionary. You've got him leading The Cockleshell Heroes, for God's sake! And who else on the big screen would command the authority to keel-haul Marlon Brando? FINEST HOUR: To be predictably unpredictable, we have to go with his sou'wester-clad, dirty-fingered, drunken indoor polo champ in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.
45	GLYNIS JOHNS All-singing, all-dancing, all-piano-playing - 'the complete actress' as The Stage would have it. Glynis has certainly had a full career, lasting pretty much six decades, from donning a big vulcanised rubber tail in original mermaid-com Miranda, through settling New Zealand with Jack Hawkins and Kenneth Williams in The Seekers, to deing driven to vinegar-assisted distraction by anal husband Terry-Thomas in Vault of Horror. In all eventualities, class was exhibited in no small spoonfuls. Right up to the end, and even appearing in utter, utter shite like non-rom non-com While You Were Sleeping, she still charmed as a daffily carefree gran. FINEST HOUR: 'Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid...' Call us sentimental, but what better demonstration of her many talents can there be than Mary Poppins?
44	SUSAN GEORGE As dullards have it, she was a child actress who 'went rude'. That's it, case closed, knowing harrumphs all round, retire haughtily in a Justice Maltravers stylee. But between the extremes of the Children’s Film Foundation and Straw Dogs, there's her victim of Ian Ogilvy in The Sorcerers, her bird knocked up by Jack Shepherd in All neat in Black Stockings, her schoolgirl living in sin with Charles Bronson in Twinky... Ok, they have a point. But there's also The Looking Glass War, Eyewitness and Spring and Port Wine in the defence's case. The sexpot jury's still out. FINEST HOUR: Pushing James Mason's herring to the side of her plate in Spring..., 'best' booter' or no 'best booter'.
43	FREDDIE JONES A late arrival to the actors' ball, Freddie Jones got stuck into cinema with enviable gusto. It's more likely the prevalence of the genre at the time that led him to do mostly horror rather than any thespian limitations he may have had, but the likes of Frankenstein must be Destroyed and the Satanic Rites of Dracula suited his baroque style down to the ground. Oh, and we can hardly ignore his cantankerous, silver band-loving Mr Rockbottom in Never Too Young To Rock, can we? FINEST HOUR: Admittedly, we haven't seen his performance in Gollocks! There's Plenty of Room in New Zealand, but as far as we know there's no beating his operatically bastardish Bytes in The Elephant Man.
42	LEO MCKERN It may seem like a career Ground Zero for those coming at the monocular Aussie's works from the wrong end, but Rumpole was the logical conclusion of all that kindly avuncularity overlaid with an almost impenetrable cantankerousness that had gone before. Bellicose newspaper ed (Australian, too) in The Day the Earth Caught Fire. Leader of Beatles-coveting human sacrifice cult in Help! Eponymous father in Ryan's Daughter. A rather demented Moriarty in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother. The Prisoner must have seemed rather sedate after all that. FINEST HOUR: Desperate, mad and dangerous university professor out to gas the world into silly oblivion in A Jolly Bad Fellow.
41	IRENE HANDL You've already got a mental picture of a charlady in your head, possibly augmented by that distinctive 'cockney lady trying to put on airs and missing by a country mile' accent of Songs for Swinging Sellers fame. But there are many variations one can work along the Crevatte-Fruitbat axis. From Benny Hill's sis in The Italian Job to Jack MacGowran's landlady in the dippy Wonderwall, from 'doing' for Robert Stephens in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes to watching Rita Tushingham doesn't nick her vintage furs in Smashing Time. FINEST HOUR: Got to be Mrs Kite in I'm All Right, Jack, most certainly not sharing her husband's dreams of all those cornfields and ballet in the evening.
40	TERRY SCOTT Pre-Medford, there's a reliable seam of 'local bobby' roles racked up by the former Owen John, exhibiting, according to Mike Davis, 'a knockout line in quiet sarcasm and bumbling' as the cop in The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery. Plus, says Mike, 'trying to get Betty Marsden going in "Carry On Camping" deserves a vote or two.' It certainly does. FINEST HOUR: The aforementioned Peter Potter and his Cardinal Wolsey are sound turns, but we have to say the childishly bluff, underpants-wearing Sergeant Major in ...Up the Khyber is our favourite. 'I don't care if they were hand-made by your father!' 'Well, he did do the flowers...'
39	HERBERT LOM We kind of regret over-using the phrase 'starting as he meant to go on' in these entries, because what have we got left to describe a man who made his British film debut as Napoleon? From then on, whether shooting his nose off in the Pink Panther films or refusing to bash his head against a concrete post in Phantom of the Opera, the world's least bouncing Czech elevated many a supporting role above its second-best status with a tempting blend of eloquence and shiftiness. FINEST HOUR: Demonstrating this point to perfection, while the rest of The Ladykillers turned in performances with capital 'p's, Lom, in the words of director Alexander Mackendrick, acted 'as if he didn't know he was funny', which sums up the man's unique craft as well as anything.
38	IAN CARMICHAEL We can only presume that Carmichael's briar is fuming at the sought not to mention sound of the clodhopping 'teen' remake of his mesiterwork, School for Scoundrels. Though he'd never be so ghastly as to actually express such revulsion of course. Daffy upper class public school twit with a streak of steel in him, Carmichael was undoubtedly a major talent who never got the acting plaudits he deserved on account of perpetrating the unforgivable crime of giving the public what they wanted, like Sean Connery or Roger Moore. But like Connery and Moore Carmichael was as much an indispensable part of his epoch as anyone was and for that he should be garlanded. His affable but pathetic uslessness in School for Scoundrels is pathetic but funny. But such was his skill in the role that when he changed places with caddish TT the audience cheered instead of jeered, which in less skillful hands they might easily have done. And that was just one role! There were dozens of others and all just as good. FINEST HOUR: As patsy turned provocateur Windrush in I'm All Right, Jack. See the cut of that Tweed ye dastardly villains and quake!
37	PETER BUTTERWORTH Proof positive that, in many a film comedy, the nominally 'straight' man is often to be found giving a more assured comic performance than the clown. Consider his Citizen Bidet in Carry On... Don't Lose Your Head! While Williams flares and drawls and gasps as his superior, Butterworth fawns, nods in eager agreement, immediately looks puzzled as to what he's agreeing to, dismisses the worry from his mind and nods again, opens his mouth as if to respond, looks surprised when no words emerge from his mouth, looks down at the floor for a bit, then decides the best course of action is to stick to what you know best, and starts nodding eagerly again. All in the space of a single Kenneth Williams sentence. Now that's attention to detail. FINEST HOUR: Fidgeting for all he's worth in silent comedy short Ouch! as Jonah Whale, wedding wrecker.
36	GEORGE COLE Anyone who learns their trade off Alastair Sim is doing something right. It's tempting to see George Cole's as a career of two halves - his juvenile, gauche early roles followed by the middle-aged wiseacres, but they're more like two ends of a continuous life. (Compare and contrast Arthur Daley and St Trinian's Flash harry for something approaching proof for this spurious conjecture.) He foiled spies in Cottage to Let, held up a bank for an inheritance in Laughter in paradise, and he *was* Alastair Sim Jr in Scrooge. A nice little earner indeed. FINEST HOUR: Heralding the first knockings of Daleydom as Fingers, incompetent head of an even more hopeless criminal gang in joyous Rank comedy Too Many Crooks.
35	DENHOLM ELLIOTT Beyond the snug and cosy realm of The Cad - roguishly superior, yes, but in the end loveably trivial - there is The Bastard. The Bastard does nasty things in a brutally cynical way, and is much harder to like than The Cad. There's also the constant hint that, unlike The Cad, The Bastard secretly harbours something approaching remorse, and hates himself for what he is. In other words, The Bastard is infinitely more rounded as a type, and Denholm Elliot was truly the Bastard's Bastard. His role as Charlie Prince defined his métier: one who's seen enough of the world to decide he doesn't like it, or anyone in it much, but might as well get what little he can out of the swines by any means necessary while he's here. Thenceforth came his seedy abortionist in Alfie, 'the finger of righteousness' in the Night They Raided Minsky's, the superior knob surgeon in the Percy films, and the similarly genitalian Peter Niss in The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, plus innumerable other mountebanks. A fantastic actor. Just don't lend him a tenner. FINEST HOUR: There's little to beat that squash-game-cum-school-for-cynics scene with Alan Bates in Nothing But the Best.
34	RICHARD HARRIS Characterised by Clive James as permanently baring his lower teeth, and to be fair there's lots to have a go at Dickie H for. MacArthur Park, obviously. The bloody hellraising anecdotes. Tarzan. Orca. The Wild Geese. But hang on, he was rather good in that, wasn't he? Herein lies the rub - Harris didn't give a toss about the Proper Way of Doing Things, he just got on with the Harris Way of Doing Things. And he certainly got things done. Heroes of Telemark, Camelot, Juggernaut, A Man Called Horse, Robin and Marion... He earned the odd gin and orange, we feel. FINEST HOUR: It's got to be This Sporting Life. He never made the rugby grade in real life, but this was surely better. And yes, those teeth are prominent throughout.
33	DIRK BOGARDE Actor or novelist? Dandy or raconteur? The British Rock Hudson or John Sessions in a Panama hat? The public may never have figured it out, but they nevertheless forgave him for shooting Jack Warner in The Blue Lamp (not his debut, though - that was, winningly, in Formby racehorse comedy Come On George!) Three periods to the acting career: early wholesome fare as the 'idol of the Odeons' (the Doctor films of course) followed by an either brave or ill-advised dalliance with *that* taboo (Victim, and to a lesser extent those leather trews in The Singer Not the Song), leading to our favorite era, a 'what the hell' period of anything-goes casting (Modesty Blaise, Accident, Our Mother's House, The Mind Benders). FINEST HOUR: Death in Venice? The Night Porter? Weeeel, fair enough, but we've got to plump for his hapless journo in Darling, dropping everything for Julie Christie and losing it all when Laurence Harvey turns up.
32	SID JAMES Two separate careers, or two ends of the same cackling candle? There's the filthy Johannesburger's comedy cockney sark, from Hancock through to the Carry Ons, it goes without saying, but the serious and semi-serious pre-'60s dues-paying years gave Sid a more gritty, shifty persona, as henchmen (The Lavender Hill Mob) barmen (The Small Back Room) barrow boys (The Yellow Balloon) and even dance instructors (We Joined the Navy). Who's cackling now? FINEST HOUR: We'll be accused of being willfully obscure if we don't pick a Carry On, so how about his obsessive-turned-repentant cab firm owner in Cabbie? The first name of his character escapes us for the moment.
31	LESLIE PHILLIPS There can be few people left on Earth who don't know the gentleman's gentleman came from a working class London family, but that hoary old cliché points the way to a career a tad deeper than endless suave doorbell impersonations. If you want unvarnished Phillips, try one of those Ealing 'working milieu' dramas like Pool of London, with Les as a reasonably rough jack tar hanging round the docks. Ironically, it was a progression up the naval and military ranks, via various films, which saw more use of that toppermost accent, culminating in the 'left hand down a bit' shenanigans of The Navy Lark. Then came the Carry Ons and Doctors, and his character names became ever more fruitily baroque: Dandy Fosdyke, Kingsley Binns, Dennis Proudfoot, Gilbert Bodley. A body of work too distinctive for BAFTA, it seems. Tchah! FINEST HOUR: Running the whole gamut in Doctor in Love: chatting up fillies, acting drunk, panicking in a cowardly funk, and adding at least another 100% of worth to the production in the process.
30	MADELINE SMITH A theme of unfair stereotyping runs through this list, for which we make no apologies. We know Madeline Smith is an actress of high versatility, as at home inventing Plasticene on Eureka! as she is Sapphing it up with Ingrid Pitt in The Vampire Lovers. Sub-Halliwell idiots, however, still maintain she's just a pair of knockers and a smile, and as they're in charge of the pen, so it must be. Go on Mr Guardian Guide, tell us the anecdote about the zip on Live and let Die again, why don't you? Buh. FINEST HOUR: On telly, it's Eureka! for sure, but having Tom Baker and Eric Morecambe duelling for your affections in The Passionate Pilgrim is as fine a point as any to drop your career and go off and have kids.
29	JAMES ROBERTSON JUSTICE Mike Davis again steps up to the lectern: 'The original and the best, who could probably out shout Brian Blessed at ten paces. Of course Sir Lancelot Spratt, but I remember a few other moments from deep in B/w Sunday afternoon telly. The teaming with Stanley Baxter and Leslie Phillips in a trio (I think ) of "rib ticklers"... "Very Important Person" being a favourite which has also has a great turn from Eric Sykes as "the sports officer".' FINEST HOUR: ...involves two words. We'll say no more than that.
28	FENELLA FIELDING You want old-school upper crust sauce without the transatlantic taint of a Joan Collins? Fenella's your girl! That husky voice was a big part of it of course, as used to mesmerising effect in Dougal and the Blue Cat. In Follow a Star, she takes one of the cameos that make a Norman Wisdom film tolerable, and similarly makes up for the otherwise diminishing returns in three Doctor... films. No role intimidated her - she held her own as part of a sort of British Addams family amongst such demonstrative fruits as Robert Morley, Joyce Grenfell and Peter Bull in The Old Dark House. FINEST HOUR: She was Penny Panting in ...Regardless, of course, but at the risk of being predictable, her Valeria Watt in Carry On Screaming is surely the one to beat.
27	DONALD PLEASENCE Positioned firmly at the opposite end of the optical scale from Madeline Smith, Don was similarly wedded to the horror genre from early on in his career. He did more than the stereotypical staring psychopath, though. His William Hare in The Flesh and the Fiends, for instance, was positively debonair, at least as far as Victorian graverobbers go. But there's nothing remotely wrong with the roles that made his name: You Only Live Twice, Halloween, The Great Escape and so on. But it would be a shame if his 'spirit of dark and lonely water' aspects overshadowed a versatile and often dead funny talents. FINEST HOUR: We could show off and go for Cul-De-Sac, but we have to lay our money on Death Line - a horror, yes, but Pleasence's weatherbeaten inspector is, in a neat twist on the usual state of affairs, just about the only sympathetic, even sane, character in the entire film.
26	BERNARD BRESSLAW Steve Bolsover makes a mad, passionate case case for Big Bern: 'Yes, we know he can do the comedic stuff, but his turns in Krull and Hawk The Slayer prove just what a damn fine actor he was. He introduced a catchphrase to the general public, 'I only arsked', like you didn't know, he released a few singles and he was quite tall as well, so a few claims to fame there. His turn as Gort in Hawk The Slayer is by my reckoning his finest hour.' We're not going to argye with any of that. FINEST HOUR: Well, like the man said, although mention also must go to his bewildered bobby being lectured on Trotsky by a homeless David Warner in Morgan: a Suitable Case for Treatment.
25	HONOR BLACKMAN The standard breakdown goes with Honor: pre- and post-telly film roles. Before getting it together with the bowler hat, she notched up a fine and sultry roster of parts, from the less-than-promising horse-related death of Fame is the Spur through smuggling comedy Green grow the Rushes, Titanic tragedy A Night to Remember and underrated crime thriller Serena among many others. After taking those judo lessons she was, of course, *that* punningly-named Bond girl, and straddled every genre from Gatling gun westerns like Something Big to Brit horror such as decidedly nutty babysitter basher Fright. FINEST HOUR: Being the best thing in another horror, mansion inheritance murderthon The Cat and the Canary, as the sporty, acidic and possibly lesbian pal of Olivia Hussey.
24	JOAN SIMS Refused entry to RADA, Essex girl Joan made a career out of character parts which celebrated the unvarnished, free-of-airs-and-graces side of life. Her characters were called things like Ethel, Edna, Beryl and Vi, and were often instrumental in dragging the more high-faluting cast members solidly down to Earth. Hence she was possibly the most sympathetic of the Carry On regulars. FINEST HOUR: As if to perfectly demonstrate the 'thwarted airs' theory, Lady Ruff-Diamond in Carry On Up the Khyber. 'I say! He didn't 'alf crack that one orf, didn't he?'
23	CHRISTOPHER LEE We'll have to watch what we say here. Does he still hate people banging on about Dracula or not? We don't remember. Anyway, no need to let such autumnal cantankerousness blot such a singular career. The horror end of affairs speaks for itself (well, except perhaps Meatcleaver Massacre) but there's also his civilian sideline in sinisterly superior types: Mycroft Holmes, Captain Rochefort, Scaramanga et al. FINEST HOUR: We'll play it safe and plump for Lord Summerisle. If that's OK with you of course, Chris.
22	HAYLEY MILLS Try saying that name without bursting out cheering. We know we can't. And you think Disney: wobbly split-screen doubling-up in The Parent Trap (plus *that* theme), The Moon-Spinners and of course That Darn Cat! Things were kept in the family: The Truth About Spring starred her dad as her dad, and Whistle Down the Wind was written by mum. Attempts to kick the wholesome albatross into touch were thwarted when she failed to land the title role in Lolita, but worked with the trio of The Family Way (arse in view), Pretty Polly (sub-continent coppings-off) and Twisted Nerve (where to begin?) Sadly, the public couldn't catch up, so she bogged off to live in a windmill and raise him off Kula Shaker, and a '70s of cheap thrillers and iffy returns to past glories led to telly, a Disney reunion and no less than three Parent Trap sequels. FINEST HOUR: The less well-remembered younger brother of Whistle... it may be, and incestuously birthed to boot (written by mum, directed by dad), but her emotionally stunted village outcast in Sky West and Crooked chokes us up every time.
21	HATTIE JACQUES Once, twice, thrice, four times a Matron of course, but to write off La Jacques as a comically predatory medical chubbster is to miss a whole lot of good stuff outside the realm of the over-starched tabard. The glamorous Hat was in evidence in The Pickwick Papers. The down-at-heel Hat is evinced as Dolly the fortune teller in Hancock's The Punch and Judy Man. The Latin Hat gesticulates wildly at Peter Butterworth throughout Carry on Abroad. And best of all, there's the sweetly innocent Hat Eric Sykes would take as his sister on telly, trotted out in the cinema a few times too. A Hat for every occasion, in fact. FINEST HOUR: Giving the most complex performance ever seen in a Carry On (more of an achievement than it sounds, honest) as the conscience-wracked wife of Sid James' taxi boss in Carry On Cabby, having pangs of remorse over her secret life as Miss Glam (Sexy Hat - there's another one!)
20	PETER SELLERS Okay, so there are two contenders for the crown of greatest ever film star if we whittle it down to a straight fight: Jimmy Cagney - sponsor, Orson Welles - and Pe'er Sellers - sponsor, Creamguide(Films). There isn't time or space in any format shorter than the magnificent tome that is The Life and Death of Peter Sellers by loony Roger Lewis to cogitate on the subject as a whole. So instead we'll just say that if any of the usual suspects (except anyone in The Usual Suspects of course, who hardly rate on the lowest star equivalent Cumbria-bothering reaches of the Richter Scale) have given any better performances than the fun, subtely, nuance, slapstick, pathos, tragedy, proper laugh out loud comedy on show in roles loke Wee Sonny MacGregor, Rev John Smallwood, Clouseau, The March Hare, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, Pearly Gates, John Lewis or Count Mountjoy - and that's hardly even scraping the surface - then it's entirely passed us by. But it hasn't and he's the best. FINEST HOUR: How to choose? But despite what snobs might purport to be the contrarywise case, attempting to pull Herbert Lom's tooth while whacked out on nitrus oxide as his nose drops off runs everything pretty close. "There is the naughty one!"
19	LIONEL JEFFRIES As nominated by Mike Davis: 'So good as the forerunner of Mr Mackay from Porridge as "CPO Crouty" in the Peter Sellers comedy "Two Way Stretch" . Hard as nails to the prisoners and then cow towing to the Guvnor. Also of course a point or two for his POSH performance in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ". On the other side of the camera we come to "The Railway Children" ...enough said!' FINEST HOUR: Port out, starboard home... well, why not? If we're including directorial triumphs, The Amazing Mr Blunden never fails to beguile during a wet bank holiday afternoon.
18	CHARLES GRAY Derided by petifogging walloons the world over for being 'too nice' as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, which we just can't agree with. Iconic Donny Pleasance's scarred bullethead may be, but the sly avuncularity of his Willard White impersonatin' mastermind hits just the right spot for that gloriously daffy film. Espionage was his strong suit: The Seven Per-Cent Solution, Masquerade, The Executioner among others saw him daggering cloaks left and right. Oh, and we'll take his dancing judge in Shock Treatment over his afternoon's work in Rocky Horror any day. FINEST HOUR: That sinister avuncularity comes to the fore in The Devil Rides Out, as charming Satanist leader Mocata.
17	MICHAEL HORDERN A man who always seems to be clad in either a toga or a long coat (or, at the end of The Wildcats of St Trinians, just his pants, but we'll gloss over that one). A man so somehow comforting in an Old Boys Club sort of way (cf Richard Vernon) even when he plays seedy characters like his cameo as a disgraced bomb expert reduced to operating the scoreboard at a dog track, there's still a tangible inner core of respectable resilience... somewhere. Always amusing, never Ludicrus (except in Up Pompeii! of course). FINEST HOUR: His violent death against a plastic sheet in Theatre of Blood is an unshakeable image, but for a bit more pathos, there's always his BBC newsreader Bules Martin in The Bed-Sitting Room, wandering the wilderness with his cutout telly screen and dinner jacket remnants, broadcasting to an audience of one.
16	RALPH RICHARDSON 'The clergy's loss was the stage's gain!' 'Which one was he, again?' Ah, to be a Grand Old Man of the stage and have your name eternally invoked with mock reverence by old duffers who keep confusing you with Olivier. Filmwise, though, we hope things are less brandy-clouded and vague. Early roles in vintage efforts like Boris Karloff's The Ghoul and fantastically weird bus-crash portmanteau Friday the Thirteenth led to his first lead role: appropriately enough, Major Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond. After that the upper lip never slackened, even through the Art Deco pomp of Things to Come, the serial number espionage of Our Man in Havana and the chilly reminiscence of Dr Zhivago, on to a dotage boring the arse off fellow travellers in The Wrong Box, avoiding atomic mutation in The Bed-Sitting Room and looking mildly apologetic in a suit in Time Bandits. FINEST HOUR: Do you know, we're stumped. So let's chuck in O Lucky Man! for the pure bally hell of it. 'Beware of Mrs Ball's treacle tart, ' indeed.
15	WILL HAY A genius. No, really. And we don't even feel the need to preface that with the mealy-mouthed 'of course, the word "genius" is bandied about all too often these days...' rejoinder. Just look at it this way. Music hall sketch: dopey teacher, interfering schoolboys who, it quickly transpires, know more about the subject being taught than he does, capers galore, thwarted dignity, twenty minutes, wind it up, on with the performing seals. It was Hay's job to take that sturdy enough but unpromising scenario, and take it, and by extension the art of the music-hall sketch, away from its gag-'n'-catchphrase bottom end and into the high realms of character-driven high dudgeon. When he got onto film 'twas even better. And when the mortar board came off, well, things fairly flew. His acting skills, flanked by Moore Marriott and Graham Moffat, shone like no other comedian-turned-actor. While others were putting the comedy clocks back with their banjoleles and cockney asides, Will was bravely putting them forward. Even if it did mean he nearly got run over by a train. FINEST HOUR: My Learned Friend's as good a place as any to start. Not only for inventing The Thirty-Nine Steps (Big Ben Edition) ending, but also that masterful mix of pride and deviousness exhibited in his trial. 'Don't tell me, you wrote that one up against the Workhouse wall.'
14	BILLIE WHITELAW Devotees of the legitimate stage can't picture Ms Whitelaw without an attendant pile of mud and crap covering her lower half, but her cinema roles were every bit as disturbing as Beckett. She was run over by Gregory Peck in The Omen. On the showbiz skids in The Comedy Man. Dragged into Albert Finney's hardboiled fantasy in Gumshoe. Attacked by Donald Pleasence in The Flesh and the Fiends. Even worse, married to Donald Pleasence in Hell is a City. Surely becoming a deranged, disembodied mouth was small relief after that lot? FINEST HOUR: Hayley Mills's frustrated mum unwisely coming on to Hywell Bennett in Twisted Nerve.
13	WILFRID BRAMBELL Grandson Paul McCartney may have insisted he was 'very clean', but no-one 'did' shabby like Wilfrid B. Drunks, minor tradesmen, tinkers in several films before and after Steptoe, and shifty, unwelcome dads and grandads in general were the stomping ground of an actor who only started to come to filmic notoriety in his late '40s, although by then casting directors were already adding a good couple of decades to that innings. A dirty old man, then. But what a dirty old man! FINEST HOUR: Sacrilegiously setting the Steptoes aside, the best thing in iffy Walt Disney Jules Verne adaptation In Search of the Castaways is easily Brambell's demented performance as a crazy-eyed, Bible-bashing loon.
12	PETER O'TOOLE Walking the tightrope of self-parody for as long as we can remember (which is probably longer than he can remember), yet with a decent enough sense of humour about himself and his work to stave off a Burton/Reed-style meltdown. Great Oscar-missing turns are legion in his folio: we'd single out his magisterially unsteady Not Errol Flynn in My Favourite Year, and his dilettantish ly psychotic Not Jesus Christ in The Ruling Class... FINEST HOUR: ... but when all the cosmic hay's been gathered, we're sure his maniacal, airborne director-sadist in the absurdly underrated The Stunt Man will eventually be shoved up on the great big shiny pedestal it richly deserves.
11	ALEC GUINNESS Ah, 'The Stranger in our Midst'. The mask behind the mask. His own name escapes him. The only role that was beyond his grasp was that of himself... and other interminable Front Row guff. But the very presence of such over-hearty obfuscation belies a certain critical unease in being unable to usefully describe just what he was up to. Sidney Stratton, Henry Holland, Denry Machin, Colonel Nicholson, Father Brown, Dr Zhivago, Adolf Hitler... just put your notebooks away and let him get on with it, it's easier in the long run. FINEST HOUR: Something old, something new, something borrowed... well, by his own admission his magisterial (Christ, we're at it now) Professor Marcus in The Ladykillers was half-inched from Alastair Sim's seedy pseudo-psychic Henry Squales in London Belongs to Me, and Kind Hearts and Coronets is too obvious a choice even for Barry Norman, so let's plump for a film a lot of people have a problem with - not least Guinness himself, who wrote the script - The Horse's Mouth, and his wayward, foot-obsessed artist Gulley Jimson. And we're sticking by that choice. 'I hope they don't laugh...'
10	MARGARET RUTHERFORD The word here, of course, is 'formidable'. Formidable like the gangster's moll in Margs' first ever film role, whacking a copper with her brolly. Formidable like the Doolittle-esque pet shop owner in An Alligator Named Daisy. Formidable like Miss Prism. Formidable like Miss Marple. The sheer authority and indefatigability emanating from Margaret Rutherford means she can be as eccentric as the writers can make her, and still give off an unmistakeable air of dignity. Dottiness never deported itself with such showboating elan. FINEST HOUR: As the cucumber sandwich-munching medium Madame Arcati in the film of Blithe Spirit, complete with parrot.
9	JENNY AGUTTER Recent studies have shown that the average man aged between thirty and forty spent 20% of his formative years... let's say 'contemplating' the career of Jenny Agutter. And with four touchstone yoof films under her belt - The Railway Children, Logan's Run, Walkabout and An American Werewolf in London, natch - it's easy to see why she's placed in the personal top tens of a whole generation. Add in a slew of more obscure treats like Equus, The Survivor, I Start Counting and that weird dramatisation of some John Betjeman poems (she was miss Joan Hunter Dunn, of course) and you couldn't ask for a richer canon. FINEST HOUR: 'Daddy, my daddy!' It'll never grow stale, will it?
8	DAVID WARNER He's not always a screen villain, as he'd be at pains to remind you, but when he is, he's a fantastic one nonetheless. Able to run the gamut of bad lads - from louche dropout in Work is a Four-Letter Word through aristocratic heist arranger in Perfect Friday, speccy revolutionary in Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs, right up to Jack the Ripper in Time After Time and your actual Evil Genius in Time Bandits. He's not particularly evil in The Omen, mind, just a bit loopy. FINEST HOUR: And the same can be said for the schizophrenic anti-hero of Morgan: a Suitable Case for Treatment, a tour-de-force of nihilist bile-spitting in a baggy Aran sweater.
7	JOHN LE MESURIER That it's possible to get worked up about The Mezh being solely known for a single role of such manifold brilliance and subtlety points up just how amazing the rest of his career was. To attempt anything like a representative sample within the space here allowed would invite the reproach 'Do you think that's awfully wise?' Just look at a few titles - St Trinians, School for Scoundrels, Follow a Star, the Rebel, Only Two Can Play, The Wrong Box, City under the Sea, The Magic Christian... Name it, he's done it. FINEST HOUR: Under J Le M's wing Passelewe, the long-suffering aide to Max Wall's questionable King Bruno in Jabberwocky, developed a relationship with his master akin to an even more strained Mainwaring/Wilson affair.
6	HARRY H CORBETT A Burmese lad, of course, but he's welcome in this pantheon anytime. One of those careers of two halves we've been hearing so much about lately for Harry, beginning with largely straight and very intense roles as thick-set heavies (The Shakedown) and uncharacteristically underplayed murderous pervs (The Cover Girl Killer). Those who know him mainly as the emotionally repressed son in the Steptoes might be interested in his disapproving dad of rock 'n' roller Ray Brooks in Some People, released in the same year as the Steptoe pilot, or of Joe Brown in What a Crazy World the year after. And of course if you want proof of consummate versatility, he's one of the few one-termers likely to be let into a heavenly Carry On reunion, thanks to his effortlessly pitch-perfect Sergeant Bung in ...Screaming! FINEST HOUR: The Steptoe films stand proud of course, but for something a little off the well-beaten put-upon Corbett track, his ruthless, almost caddish property developer up against millionaire charladies Peggy Mount and Dandy Nicholls in Ladies Who Do is an eye-opener.
5	ROY KINNEAR Well, what to say? The picture used to illustrate the word 'stalwart' in dictionaries, if there's any justice, and if the sorts of dictionaries that have pictures in would include words like 'stalwart', which they probably wouldn't. And of course such bathos as is present in that last sentence was grist to the Kinnear repertoire. His face has depicted that trademark fast-deflating ebullience in everything from those nifty Three Musketeers pics through to Eskimo Nell and Hawk the Slayer. Irreplaceable. FINEST HOUR: Why, rolling out that barrel as Social Director Curtain in *that* gentlemen’s' excuse-me from hell on board Dick Lester's unimpeachable Juggernaut, of course.
4	LEONARD ROSSITER Len's sitcom trait - admittedly a technically brilliant and very funny one - of talking at 200 miles per hour, often seeming to speak other cast members' lines for them, before disagreeing with himself and descending into muttering manic meltdown, tends to cast an unfair slant on his stuff as a whole. But on the fleapit wall, he was also a superlatively shifty Shadrak in Billy Liar. He's a breeze as the undertaker in Oliver! He's a brief respite from the Bakelite bombast in 2001. And he's a copper in everything from The Pink Panther Strikes Again to Otley. And of course, he *was* Le Petomane. You'll believe a man can fart! FINEST HOUR: There can be none better than the perpetually panicking director of Britannia Hospital.
3	PETER CUSHING A giant among vampire killers. Endlessly professional, with just enough of a sense of humour creeping in under the floorboards, Cushing more than anyone else defines British horror, with a hundred films of that nature to his credit, ranging in quality from The Blood Beat Terror to your actual Dracula. It's a rare horror actor who can cover both camps, as it were, but Cushing does it - he can be the innocent victim, the righteous hero, the professorial expert, shabbily sinister and downright evil by turns. A whole film genre in one man. Respect is surely due. FINEST HOUR: He's one of those actors it'd be almost churlish to pick a single defining moment for. This man's worked with Laurel and Hardy, for goodness' sake! But the sight of him really going for it as the harassed widower Arthur Grimsdyke - at a time when he was still mourning his own wife - and turns in a top notch performance in the much-denigrated portmanteau genre demonstrates his selfless dedication as well as his skill.
2	TERRY-THOMAS We're as shocked as you by this result. But perhaps we shouldn't be. After all, most 'proper' polls of this kind will feature a goodly amount of stars among their top ranks for whom 'versatile' is what poets decorate their bathrooms with. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you're the best in your chosen field, and with that in mind, Old T-T deserves his absoulte shower of silver. We don't know exactly what that hyphen was all about (real name: Thomas Terry Hoar-Stevens), though the man himself joked it was the gap between those famous teeth made text. We were going to try and spot where his 'cad' persona descended into self-parody, but now we come to look at it we're not sure it did. Even in the likes of The Naked Truth, the T-T persona was already fitting like a snug trilby. He's also the best thing in a fair few duds - together at last with Jerry Lewis and Jacqueline 'Servalan' Pearce in landmark-flogging comedy Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River, and in full song with Arthur Lowe as a duo of periwigged academics in The Bawdy Adventures of Tom Jones. FINEST HOUR: Going out on a limb here maybe, but who else could have played dastardly big game hunter Sten Martin in undercranked take-off of Edwardian silent serials The Perils of Pauline? It's the man in essence: a pair of moustaches and a (wicked) smile.
1	ALISTAIR SIM A worthier winner we couldn't imagine. This actual proper genius runs anyone whose name might be raised as a contender for best film star of all time - fact! As versatile as Sellers, as subtle as Guinness, as silly as Cagney and just a better actor that DeNiro, Sim makes every single film he was in - every - single - one - worth watching. Not something any of the aforementioned stars could boast. He majored in comedy, and we have to say this must be why his star, while still in receipt of many a tip of the critical hat to this day, might be said to be undervalued. An Olivier or a Gielgud are taken seriously because they were, in the main, serious actors in serious films. Thus, fine performances such as his nervous comic writer in Hue and Cry or his eternally worn-down headmaster in The Happiest Days of Your Life remain on the 'curio' shelf, never to be elevated up among the true greats. Funny = frivolous in the minds of the film industry's opinion formers (unless we're talking silent comedy here, which is excused for some reason), which is so wrong. If anything, comedy at its best relies on a subtelty above that of most straight acting. Sim may bumble, but he's also duplicitous. He may be a funny, twitchy bachelor, but there's also a hint of something underneath that films of the time dared not name. Films like Cottage to Let and An Inspector Calls repay endless reviewings, and that's in a large part down to the craft of Alistair Sim. As mentor to at least one other actor on this list (George Cole) and inspiration to a dozen others at least, Sim's influence provides the bedrock of British film acting, and as such reaches way beyond his canon of films. From his baffling turn singing about being a 'great big businessman' to a goat in The Big Noise, to his baffling - not to say swelligant - turn in Alf's Button Afloat as an unpredictable genie, to his truly astonishing performance in London Belongs to Me, Ally Sim proved endlessly inventive and mesmerising. Scrooge merely made him immortal. FINEST HOUR: As the murderous Mr Squales in the aformentioned London Belongs To Me, which Alec Guinness, by his own admission, shamelessly cribbed from for his own legendary turn in The Ladykillers. The masterful original, however, was not eclipsed. "Have you really sunk so low? There can only be one answer...yes!"

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