From Poirot to Philanthropist: Peter Ustinov

T he choice of Peter Ustinov to play Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot in 1978’s Death on the Nile, a role he would go on to reprise six more times, initially raised a few eyebrows in the entertainment industry. Albert Finney had provided a serviceable sleuth in 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express, but Ustinov’s irrepressible charisma, cosmopolitan personality and charisma made him the most likeable and relatable iteration of Poirot there has ever been (sorry David Suchet. Apols, Kenneth Branagh). Upon viewing his first audition for the part, Christie’s daughter, Rosalind was adamant. He was, she stated tartly, ‘not Poirot’. ‘He is now!’ responded the burly thespian, cheerfully.

 A big, ruddy-cheeked man with a light, twinkling presence, Ustinov’s flamboyant on-screen persona belied a man of immense erudition, learning and humanity. From Oscar-winning actor to playwright, raconteur, writer, and wit, from diplomat, campaigner and humanitarian (and Hercule Poirot), the late Sir Peter Ustinov was a towering presence on the cultural landscape for most of the 20th century. Irredeemably British despite hailing from a long line of artists and writers and an ancestry that covered most of Europe, his was a unique, multinational character.

Ustinov was born in London, to a Russian family. Paintings by his mother, Nadia Benois, including portraits of Ustinov as a boy, and models of sets designed by his great uncle the Russian artist Alexandre Benois, commissioned by the Ballets Russes and the Royal Ballet in Covent Garden are up for auction along with paintings by the Swiss-French artist Félix Vallotton. at the age of eighty-two, almost twenty years ago. ‘He had had a busy life and he was tired,’ his son Igor said, the day after he died. ‘But he certainly was not ready to go.’ Igor’s statement rang true - speaking to the media at the same time, Ustinov’s biographer Jonathan Miller pithily summed the situation up. ‘He had an extraordinarily varied career, he had enough careers for about six other men; actor, director, writer, screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and he did all that work for the United Nations as well.’

Now, 19 years after Ustinov’s death, 170 objects from the actor’s eclectic collection are coming to auction in Paris, across two sales that allow collectors the opportunity to acquire rare and valuable objects, artefacts and artworks cherished by the great man himself. The first of two sales on 6 July, will focus on fifty works by Nadia and Alexandre Benois, Ustinov’s mother and great-uncle.

The second sale is dedicated to Ustinov himself, and in this collection, we find the story of a colourful, peripatetic life. Ustinov was a man of numerous deep interests and passions, an artist with an eye for historical importance and significance. His homes in France and Switzerland were treasuries of works from Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Félix Vallotton, Natalia Goncharova, his grandparents Alexandre and Nadia Benois, and Zinaida Serebriakova, his mother’s cousin. Then there are the drawings, some exquisite examples from Old Masters to Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec. And of course, we then have an extensive cornucopia of film memorabilia: hand-annotated battered scripts. His Golden Globe for his portrayal of Nero in the 1951 film Quo Vadis – for which he was also nominated for an Oscar and film scripts for Spartacus directed by Stanley Kubrick complete with Ustinov’s scribbles and sketches.

Today, Ustinov's legacy is kept alive by his son, renowned sculptor Igor, who co-founded the Ustinov Institute for the Study of Prejudice in Vienna, and the Ustinov Foundation in Frankfurt, continuing his father's humanitarian legacy. Igor is also a member of the board of trustees of the Winds of Hope Foundation (a Swiss foundation to fight Noma disease in Africa) and the Carène Foundation, which promotes education and the preservation of traditions. And in the spirit of the Ustinovs, he is an erudite and charismatic speaker, especially when recalling growing up in the 1960s with one of the world's best-loved actors.

'Well, I think we all got used to the idea we had to share our parents with the public, where we didn’t have a normal family, we didn’t all sit down for every meal or whatever. At some times, I saw my father more on television than I did in real life. My mother was out doing her thing too. I think its true for politicians and diplomats or whoever - children have to share their parents with their public responsibility. And we had very little access to what was happening in my father’s mind, he communicated with us in a way that was suitable for a child. Then we would go to an opening of a film we did and we saw a whole side of him we didn’t see at home.'

I remember a letter he wrote to me when I was a student. I was studying biology and I was also at the Beaux Arts - he said, you should concentrate on one thing. That’s the one thing he said - but then, he didn’t concentrate on one thing! He thought I should be different, for some reason! Once the director of my school said to him, you know, your son wants to be an artist, aren’t you worried? And he said, oh yes, I am worried, I was speaking the other day to the father of Picasso who was also very worried...'

'I think this is very interesting for many reasons. In this painting I see how Renoir has emphasised that sensual mouth, emphasised the sensuality of this person but not how she thinks. For me, it's like an icon, an archetype of the ways men would typically present women. The contrast is between the woman in her interior world yet not showing the entire person. It could a painting for a museum; it is a subject with two thoughts'

'That’s on the beach in Dieppe. It’s a very nice painting, very beautiful, I find. For me, it reminds me of trips on the boat with my father. Often, we were navigating close to the coast and I would notice him looking towards the land, a lot. As a theatre person, his world was the relationships between people, what was happening between people. And for me, as a sculptor, I was looking towards nature and the mystery of that openness, the nothingness. He was looking at that and I was fascinated by the mystery of nature and my quest for reality. All these knick-knacks between people seem to be changeable, I would be more fascinated by a mountain, a cliff, or something linked to the quest of a sculptor which is more or less - what the hell is reality? It’s also telling the story of the experience of humans with the world of nature, you dip in it, but you can get lost. It’s the frontier between the human world and the natural world. You see it’s like a cocktail party on a beach.'

'Quo Vadis is very familiar to people. Occasionally went to visit him on set. I remember the Hilton in Istanbul when he was doing Topkapi in 1962 or 1963. Many years later, I was told by someone that they had seen me when I was there and my father was running after me, shouting, please, please obey me otherwise my wife will think I have no authority.'

Sir Peter Ustinov: Actor / Collector