जीवनी

Alastair Sim

Near the end of his life he maintained a correspondence with Ray Bradbury.
He met his wife Naomi Plaskitt when they both appeared in a stage production of "The Land of Hearts Desire" by William Butler Yeats. He was 25, she was 12. They married when Naomi was 18.
His performance in London Belongs to Me (1948) so impressed Alec Guinness that he based his performance in The Ladykillers (1955) on it. So much so that Alastair is often thought to have done it.
He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the Coronation Honours List of 1953. In the early 1970s he was offered a knighthood but turned it down because it would have impinged too much on his private life.
He never signed autographs.

As I passed imperceptibly from a beautiful child to a strong handsome lad, I wanted more than anything else in the world to be of all things, a hypnotist. I practised on gentle dogs...
I stand or fall in my profession by the public's judgement of my performances. No amount of publicity can dampen a good one or gloss over a bad one.
At first I was not sure if I liked films. The sequences are so disconnected and mechanical I thought I should have difficulty "getting into the skin" of the characters. But I soon found that the care, precision and concentrated energy that attends the photographing of each scene conspires to pitch one into the right frame of mind.
It was revealed to me many years ago with conclusive certainty that I was a fool and that I had always been a fool. Since then I have been as happy as any man has a right to be.