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Leslie Howard

Acting Born Apr 3, 1893 Forest Hill, London, England, UK 24 credits

Biography

Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943) was an English actor, director and producer. He wrote many stories and articles for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair and was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s.

Active in both Britain and Hollywood, Howard played Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). He had roles in many other films, often playing the quintessential Englishman, including Berkeley Square (1933), Of Human Bondage (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938), Intermezzo (1939), "Pimpernel" Smith (1941), and The First of the Few (1942). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Berkeley Square and Pygmalion.

Howard's World War II activities included acting and filmmaking. He helped to make anti-German propaganda and shore up support for the Allies—two years after his death the British Film Yearbook described Howard's work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda". He was rumoured to have been involved with British or Allied Intelligence, sparking conspiracy theories regarding his death in 1943 when the Luftwaffe shot down BOAC Flight 777 over the Atlantic (off the coast of Cedeira, A Coruña), on which he was a passenger.

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Known for

Film

Gone with the Wind

as Ashley Wilkes

Full filmography

  • MGM Parade (1955)
  • Gone with the Wind (1939) as Ashley Wilkes
  • In Which We Serve (1942) as Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
  • 49th Parallel (1941) as Philip Armstrong Scott
  • Of Human Bondage (1934) as Philip Carey
  • Pygmalion (1938) as Henry Higgins
  • British Agent (1934) as Stephen 'Steve' Locke
  • Hollywood Out-takes and Rare Footage (1983) as Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
  • The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender (1997) as Self (archive footage)
  • Romeo and Juliet (1936) as Romeo
  • The Animal Kingdom (1932) as Tom Collier
  • "Pimpernel" Smith (1941) as Professor Horatio Smith
  • The First of the Few (1942) as R.J. Mitchell
  • A Free Soul (1931) as Dwight Winthrop
  • The Petrified Forest (1936) as Alan Squier
  • Bogart: The Untold Story (1997) as Self (archive footage)
  • The Making of a Legend: Gone with the Wind (1988) as Self (archive footage)
  • The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) as Sir Percy Blakeney / The Scarlet Pimpernel
  • Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939) as Holger Brandt
  • Why Be Good?: Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema (2007) as Self (archive footage)
  • It's Love I'm After (1937) as Basil Underwood
  • Secrets (1933) as John Carlton
  • Ingrid Bergman Remembered (1996) as Self (archive footage)
  • Complicated Women (2003) as Self (archive footage)