Award winners head to London for Sellers pic

An all-star cast of award winners and nominees is heading to London nextweek to begin filming The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers, the film biography of the late British actor-comedian.

The film, based on Roger Lewis’s biography of Sellers, will trace the actor’s rise from The Goon Show on the radio, through the Pink Panther films and Hollywood stardom up to his death from a heart attack in 1980.

The Australian actor Geoffrey Rush will portray Sellers, according to HBO, the cable television network which is producing the film, while John Lithgow will co-star as writer-director Blake Edwards, whose collaboration with Sellers spanned two decades.

They first worked together in 1964’s The Pink Panther, reteamed for four sequels and Edwards wrote and produced Sellers’ last film, Trail of the Pink Panther, which was released two years after his death.

They also worked together on the 1968 cult favourite The Party, which starred Sellers as an Indian who is accidentally invited to a Hollywood party.

Stanley Tucci will portray the late filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who directed Sellers in two films, Lolita and Dr Strangelove, while Sellers’ first and second wives will be played by Emily Watson and Charlize Theron respectively.

Of the cast, Rush has won an Oscar, Lithgow has been nominated for two Oscars and won three Emmys, Tucci has won Emmy and Golden Globe awards and Watson has been nominated for an Oscar.