Basil Rathbone? :dubious:
I’d add Peter Ustinov, though I believe he was Russian by birth.
Edward Fox
Helen Mirren. Or is she of Russian birth too? :dubious:
Hayley Mills.
John Mills.
Edward Fox, yes! “The Jackal”!
Subtangent: My grandmother was born in Dublin but came to this side at the age of 21. Some decades later, our obviously Irish cab driver guessed she was Irish after some time in the car by the way she pronounced “chickens”. Maybe that word is the shibboleth for a Dubliner.
He is. I think it’s pretty hard to hold him up as a quintessential Englishman when he has a very obvious Welsh accent.
Born in London, though her father was Russian, and her surname was originally Mironoff; her father Anglicized their name in the 1950s.
Has no one mentioned Sir Alec Guinness yet?
It’s David Niven, really. Witty, urbane, a complete chancer, a soldier - one who skims over his extremely interesting WWII career in only a few paragraphs of his autobiography, a drinker, a bounder, a gentleman.
It’s going to be different to every generation (at least outside GB), and depend on the era of films they grew up on.
I grew up on World War 2 films, mostly, as well as a few classic nineteenth century-based Disney adventures. There was never a single universal Englishman, because every film had multiple characters. But overall, the most repeated theme was the British “stiff upper lip,” laconic approach to all challenges. Some calm Brit saying “MMm, I suppose we ought to deal with that, then” seemed to be the turning point of most of them. That, or they would express annoyance at “those damn yanks” who would manage to win the battle for them by behaving badly.
+1 (G. Palmer)
This is still the SDMB, right? How has nobody yet mentioned Patrick Stewart?
Anthony Quayle?
Donald Pleasence?
Perhaps because we thought others were better answers?
Pretty sure he’s French.
See, that’s my point; even when he’s French, he’s English. Is he running a school for gifted children in New York? Yeah, he’s English. I mean, granted, the guy is English whenever he’s doing the whole Shakespearean thing – and he’s English when he’s in a King Arthur movie or a Robin Hood movie, and he’s dozens of variations on “English” when he’s playing every role in A Christmas Carol – but he’s English, is where I’m going with this.
Brian Equator.
The only Frenchman who knows all the lyrics to “Heart of Oak.” 