James David Graham Niven was an English actor, memoirist and novelist. His many roles included Squadron Leader Peter Carter in A Matter of Life and Death, Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days, and Sir Charles Lytton in The Pink Panther. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Separate Tables. He also played James Bond in Casino Royale.
About David Niven in brief
James David Graham Niven was an English actor, memoirist and novelist. His many roles included Squadron Leader Peter Carter in A Matter of Life and Death, Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days, and Sir Charles Lytton in The Pink Panther. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Separate Tables. He also played James Bond in Casino Royale. Born in London, Niven attended Heatherdown Preparatory School and Stowe School before gaining a place at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After Sandhurst, he joined the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry. He left the army, travelled to Hollywood and had several minor roles in film. Niven appeared in nearly a hundred films, and many shows for television, He also began writing books, with considerable commercial success. He was voted the second-most popular British actor in the 1945 Popularity Poll of British film stars. He later claimed he was born in Kirriemuir, in the Scottish county of Angus in 1909, but his birth certificate disproves this. He had two older sisters and a brother: Margaret Joyce Niven, Henry Degacher Niven, and the sculptor Grizel Rosemary Graham, who created the bronze sculpture Bessie that is presented to the annual winners of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. He appeared in The Elusive Pimpernel, The Toast of New Orleans, Happy Go Lovely, Happy Ever After and Carrington V.
C. Niven later appeared in Blake Edwards’ final \”Pink Panther\” films Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of thePink Panther, reprising his role as Sir CharlesLytton. His mother, Henrietta, was of French and Welsh ancestry. Her father was Captain William Degacher of the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot was married to Julia Caroline Smith, the daughter of Lieutenant General James Webber Smith. His paternal grandfather, David GrahamNiven, was from St Martin’s, a village in Perthshire, and was killed in the First World War serving with the Berkshire Yeomanry during the Gallipoli campaign on 21 August 1915. Some believe that Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt may have been David Niven’s biological father – though he began attending school as customary for the time. Following the death of Henrietta Niven in 1917, biographer, Lord Graham, suggested in Niv Graham: The Authorised Biography and Biography of her husband, Sir Thomas comyn-platt, that Comyn and Mrs Niven had been having an affair for some time before her husband’s death. Niv’s father, William Niven,. was of Scottish descent; his paternal grandfather was from Perthshire. He was killed at the Battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu War. In 1917, Niv and his brother followed their father, Walter Henry Hitchcock, in taking their mother’s maiden name of Degacher in 1874.
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