Trivia of Peter Sellers

 Trivia of Peter Sellers (8 September 1925 - 24 July 1980)

*His first career in show business was a drummer.At age 16, Sellers toured the U.K. with several jazz combos. Later, when gigs were harder to find, he branched out, printing up business cards that hinted at his future as a man of a thousand voices. They said: Peter Sellers, Drums and Impressions.

*Before he made it in the movies, Peter Sellers recorded two solo comedy albums for EMI Parlophone that were produced by George Martin, who would go on to work with The Beatles.In 1960, Sellers recorded an album with Italian actress/sex goddess Sophia Loren, entitled Peter & Sophia. It yielded a novelty hit, “Goodness Gracious Me,” that went to number four on the U.K. pop charts.

*During the filming Beat The Devil (1953), lead actor Humphrey Bogart was in a serious car accident and had several teeth knocked out. When he was unable to provide some of his dialogue, Sellers was hired to dub his voice. It remains undetected in the movie to this day.

*The year 1964 represented a peak in his career with four films in release, all of them well-received by critics and the public alike: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), for which he was Oscar nominated, The Pink Panther (1963), in which he played his signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau for the first time, its almost accidental sequel, A Shot in the Dark (1964), and The World of Henry Orient (1964). Sellers was on top of the world, but on the evening of April 5, 1964, he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack after inhaling several amyl nitrites (also called 'poppers'; an aphrodisiac-halogen combination) while engaged in a sexual act with his second wife Britt Ekland.

*The film Pink Panther (1963) was intended to have David Niven's character Sir Charles Lytton as the main character. However, Peter Sellers' portrayal of Inspector Clouseau was so loved by the crew and the audience,it became his character that this film and the sequels focused on.David Niven complain that Sellers stole the movie The Pink Panther (1963) from him.

*First actor to be nominated for a single Academy award (best actor) for a film in which he potrayed three different characters in the same film: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

*King Charles III had been a fan of Sellers since "The Goon Show (1951 - 1960). In 1975, after he had seen The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) in Montreal, he wrote to Sellers that he'd laughed so hard he had wet the dress of the woman in the next seat.Not only The King, Sellers also influence on many comedian actors like Rowan Atkinson, Peter Cook, Eddie Murphy, and Chris Rock.