Denholm Elliott

He served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. His plane was shot down over Germany in 1942 and he spent the rest of the War in Stalag 8B Prisoner of War camp in Silesia.

According to fellow British actor John Nettleton in the book "Remembering Ronnie Barker", Elliott's confidence was "severely dented" when he starred as Kilroy in a British stage production of Tennessee Williams's play "Camino Real" in 1957, after Williams complimented him on his choice to play Kilroy, an all-American southern boy, as an Australian. Elliott had actually been working for weeks trying to perfect a southern American accent. According to Nettleton, Elliott never got over Williams's comment.

He appeared in three films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Alfie (1966), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and A Room with a View (1985).

He performed (with Joss Ackland) the first gay kiss seen on a West End stage in John Mortimer's play "Bermondsey" in 1971.

The British magazine "TV Times" stated in 1975 that "since the death of Dennis Price he has cornered the market in playing upper-class drunks and con-men. But Price's villains were suave, Elliott's are seedy".

He appeared in four films with Sean Connery: Robin and Marian (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Cuba (1979) and Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989).

He served as an RAF Officer during World War II and later played such an officer in A Bridge Too Far (1977).

He appeared in two very different adaptations of "The Hound of the Baskervilles", Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous Sherlock Holmes novel, in the space of just five years. These were The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978), a widely panned spoof version starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983), a more serious version which starred Ian Richardson and Donald Churchill. He played Stapleton in the former and Dr. Mortimer in the latter.

He was a particular favorite with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in the 1980s, when he won the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in three consecutive years, the only actor ever to have achieved this. For instance, in 1982 he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his tiny role as Marcus Brody, who appears at the beginning and end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and is not part of the main story, while Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey and John Rhys-Davies, who had much more central roles in the main part of the film, were completely overlooked. After Elliott won Best Supporting Actor for Defense of the Realm (1985), Gabriel Byrne, the star of the film who was not nominated at the awards, joked "never act with children, dogs, or Denholm Elliott".

According to the American film critic Leonard Maltin, he became most widely known to movie audiences as the academic Marcus Brody in two installments of the hugely successful Indiana Jones series, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989), and as the valet, Coleman, in the Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd comedy Trading Places (1983).

He was on the list of possible actors for the roles of Dr. Hans Fallada, Dr. Bukovsky, Dr. Armstrong and Sir Percy Heseltine in Lifeforce (1985).

A bisexual with many partners during his life, he tested HIV positive in 1987 and was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. He continued working until a year before he died in 1992. Following his death, some sources stated that he acquired the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion. However, his widow Susan documented their open marriage and her husband's bisexuality in her book "Denholm Elliott: Quest for Love", published two years after his death.

He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1988 Queen's New Year Honours List for his services to Drama.

He had two children, Jennifer Elliott and Mark Elliott. Jennifer became addicted to heroin and hanged herself in 2003.

Rather than recast the role of Marcus Brody in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), director Steven Spielberg and writer David Koepp created a new character, Charles Stanforth, played by Jim Broadbent. The passing of Marcus Brody is acknowledged several times in the film, with a portrait of him hanging in the hallway outside Indy's classroom, a statue of him in a University courtyard, and a malt shop named "Brody's.".