English-American actor and filmmaker Charles Laughton was BOTD in 1899. Born in Scarborough in Yorkshire to a family of hoteliers, he showed an early interest in theatre, and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He made his first professional stage appearance at 1926, and appeared in the comedy film Blue Bottles in 1928. Big-bodied, portly and with a doughy face, he seemed an unlikely candidate for stardom, but his versatility and ability to shape-shift led to a number of leading Shakespearean roles at the Old Vic Theatre. After a successful London run of Payment Deferred, he transferred with the play to New York City, where he was talent spotted by a Hollywood agent and signed by Paramount Pictures. His first American film appearance was the thriller The Old Dark House, directed by James Whale. After playing Roman emperor Nero in The Sign of the Cross, he returned to England to play the title role in The Private Life of Henry VIII. A critical and commercial success, the film won him an Oscar and launched him to stardom. He amassed an impressive gallery of rogues, villains and freaks, including Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty and the hunchback Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. His career faded in the post-war period, and he undertook extensive spoken-word theatrical tours, and directed the long-running Broadway drama The Caine Mutiny. In 1955, he directed the Gothic thriller The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum as a broodingly handsome psychopath. Disappointed by its commercial failure, he never directed again. He had a minor Hollywood comeback in the 1960s, with vivid appearances in Stanley Kubrick’s sword-and-sandals epic Spartacus and Otto Preminger’s gay-themed drama Advise & Consent. Laughton married actress Elsa Lanchester in 1929, acting together in several films and plays. They had an open relationship, allowing Laughton to pursue discreet affairs with men. Biographers have theorised that Lanchester may also have been a lesbian, entering into a lavender marriage with Laughton as a convenient cover for both of them. In 1960, they purchased a house in Santa Monica next door to celebrity gay couple Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy. The two couples became close friends, with Isherwood and Bachardy privately encouraging Laughton to accept his homosexuality. He died in 1962, aged 63. Now considered one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, his reputation as a filmmaker has steadily increased since his death, with Night of the Hunter now recognised as a classic of American cinema.