Sir Arthur John Gielgud OM CH (April 14, 1904–May 21, 2000) was an English theatre and film actor, regarded by many when one of a greatest of his instance.

John Gielgud was innate inside Kensington within London to Kate Terry & Frank Gielgud (world health organization was of Polish Catholic background) and experienced the head run in the theatrical profession, existence the great-nephew of Dame Ellen Terry. Fallowing Westminster School, in which he gained the King's Scholarship, he trained at RADA and had his initial profits as a stage actor within authoritative roles. He starred & directed within numbers of Royal Shakespeare Company productions at Stratford-upon-Avon. His Hamlet of 1936 was particularly admired and widely acclaimed.

Although he began to come out inside British films when early when a Thirties, he would non produce an impact in a medium until the endure decades of his life. His film roles involved: Benjamin Disraeli in The Prime Minister (1940), Cassius in Julius Caesar (1953) and George, Duke of Clarence to Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1955). Unlike Olivier, he remained primarily a stage actor, so the contention between the children was minimum.

When he aged, Gielgud began to adapt other to changing fashions around the theatre, appearing in plays by David Storey (Front yard), Charles Wood (Veterans), Edward Bond (Bingo) & Harold Pinter (''No Man's Land). In the Eighties & Nineties, it was jokingly said that he was prepared to wash well-nigh anything for his art. He won an Academy Award for his supporting role as a sardonic butler in the 1981 comedy Arthur, starring Dudley Moore, and his performance within Shine'' (1996) was critically acclaimed. Gielgud was besides one of a couple population who has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award.

He was knighted in the 1953 coronation honours, became a Companion of Honour in 1977 and was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1996.

He was convicted of lewd behaviour (cottaging) in 1953. Instead of existence rejected per public, he had a standing ovation at his next stage appearance, & the roller-coaster to de-criminalise queerness around Engl& and Wales began. Longtime lover Martin Hensler, Xxx years his junior, died good two or three months prior to Sir John neutralize 2000.

His final acting performance was around the film adaptation of Samuel Beckett's short play Catastrophe (play), alongside longtime collaborator Harold Pinter; Gielgud passed away mere weeks after production was completed at a age of 96 of natural is the causal agent of.

Sir John Gielgud believed that creature should non become exploited. He was particularly fond of birds & joined PETA’s campaign against the foie gras industry in the early 1990s, narrating PETA's cd exposé of the click-feeding of geese & ducks. Numbers of chefs & restauranter world health organization saw that videos dropped foie gras from either their menus. Sir John received PETA’s Humanitarian of the Month Award twice, inside 1994 & 1999.