Peter Sellers
September 8, 1925 — July, 24 1980

“He’s the hardest worker I know. I’d come into the [Dr. Strangelove] studio at seven o’clock in the morning and there would be Peter Sellers. Waiting, ready. Full of ideas. When you are inspired and professionally accomplished as Peter, the only limit to the importance of your work is your willingness to take chances. I believe Peter will take the most incredible chances with a characterization, and he is receptive to comic ideas most of his contemporaries would think unfunny and meaningless. This has, in my view, made his best work absolutely unique and important. […]

He has the ability to go into the area where it’s like a dream. He can go into surrealism and keep his other leg in reality. He can do things which are not real—for instance, it’s almost inconceivable that anybody could behave as Strangelove does in the last scene, with the hand. I suppose even a psychotic personality wouldn’t really behave that way. But it’s something somebody might do in a dream.” — Stanley Kubrick