John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE (22 February 1908 – 23 April 2005) was an English actor, who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.
He took the lead in Great Expectations in 1946, and subsequently made his career playing traditionally British heroes such as Captain Robert Falcon Scott in Scott of the Antarctic (1948). Over the next decade he became particularly associated with war dramas, such as The Colditz Story (1954), Above Us the Waves (1955) and Ice-Cold in Alex (1958). He often acted in the roles of people who are not at all exceptional, but become heroes due to their common sense, generosity and 
right judgement. Altogether he appeared in over 120 films.
As Col. Barrow in “Tunes of Glory”, he won the best Actor Award at the 1960 Venice Film Festival. For his role as the village idiot in Ryan’s Daughter (1970) — a complete departure from his usual style — Mills won an Academy Award for Best Supporting 
Actor. His most famous television role was probably as the title character in Quatermass for ITV in 1979. Also on the small screen, in 1974 he starred as Captain Tommy “The Elephant” Devon in the six-part television drama series The Zoo Gang, about a group of former underground freedom fighters from World War II, with Brian Keith, Lilli Palmer, and Barry Morse.
In 2002 Mills released his extensive home movie footage in a documentary film entitled John Mills’ Moving Memories, with interviews with Mills, his children Hayley, Juliet and Jonathon and Richard Attenborough. The film was directed and edited by Marcus Dillistone, and features behind the scenes footage and stories from films such as Ice-Cold in Alex and Dunkirk.
