Alastair Sim

Inimitable Scottish comic performer, a truly gifted character player whose brilliant timing, hangdog expression and large, glowering eyes helped propel him to stardom in middle age. Sim made his screen debut in the mid-1930s at the age of 35 and went on to play assorted eccentrics and bumblers, both sympathetic and villainous, through the mid-70s.

Sim was especially memorable as the enterprising Inspector Cockrill in "Green for Danger" (1946), the over-taxed headmaster in the prep-school farce, "The Happiest Days of Your Life" (1949), the screen's greatest Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" (1951), the side-splittingly funny schemer of "The Green Man" (1956) and as a ridiculous clergyman in the outlandish satire, "The Ruling Class" (1972).