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BBC News Online profiles the late actor Peter Sellers, whose turbulent life is remembered this week in a new film biography starring Geoffrey Rush.

Peter Sellers on Michael Parkinson's TV chat show in 1972

"If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do," said Peter Sellers. "I do not know who or what I am."

For cinema-goers around the world, he was a comic genius whose uncanny abilities as an impressionist resulted in some of the silver screen's most legendary creations.

For the people who knew him, though, Sellers was a puzzle: a troubled, restless soul who could never take pleasure in his fame and the riches and associations it brought him.

A new film biography, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, controversially paints a portrait of the actor as a wife-beating, mother-fixated, drug-abusing philanderer.

Starring Geoffrey Rush as Sellers and Charlize Theron as his second wife Britt Ekland, it is sure to reopen the debate on one of the UK's most gifted and perplexing stars.

Vaudeville

Born Richard Henry Sellers in Southsea, Hampshire on 8 September 1925, Sellers was called Peter by his parents in memory of his stillborn older brother.

Sellers with fellow Goons Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan

His mother and father were vaudeville entertainers, and Sellers made his theatrical debut at two days old when they carried him on stage.

After a childhood touring the music hall circuit, Sellers was drafted into the RAF and spent much of the war as an official concert entertainer.

That training stood him in good stead later as he pursued a career in broadcasting.

He landed a spot on the BBC by calling producer Roy Speer and impersonating a then-popular radio star.

This led to his involvement with The Goon Show, where his vocal abilities and outrageous characters like Major Bloodnok, Henry Crun and Bluebottle made him a household name.

Bumbling

Sellers' film career was initially slow to take off, but his fortunes improved after he landed a part in The Ladykillers alongside his hero, Alec Guinness.

Sellers played the accident-prone Inspector Clouseau in six films

His performance as a Teddy-boy spiv in the classic Ealing comedy led to starring roles in The Mouse That Roared, I'm All Right Jack and The Millionairess with Sophia Loren.

He also appeared in Lolita, the first of two films he made with director Stanley Kubrick.

But it was in 1963's The Pink Panther that he created the iconic character for which he is best known - the bumbling Inspector Clouseau.

Sellers would reprise the accident-prone detective in four sequels, all directed by Blake Edwards. A fifth, The Trail of the Pink Panther, comprised discarded out-takes and was released after his death.

Sellers received his first Oscar nomination for 1965's Dr Strangelove, a Cold War satire that, like many of his films, saw him play more than one role.

Turmoil

His second nomination came 15 years later for his poignant portrayal of a simpleton gardener in 1979's Being There.

Geoffrey Rush plays the actor in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Between these two career high points, however, Sellers' professional and personal life was in turmoil.

Squandering his talents in a series of disastrous flops, he became more famous for his off-camera dalliances, short-lived marriages and eccentric, drug-fuelled behaviour.

A heavy smoker with a history of cardiac problems, Sellers eventually died of a heart attack on 24 July 1980.

But his legacy lives on, not least in the upcoming remake of The Pink Panther starring Steve Martin in the Clouseau role.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is now showing across the UK.