Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore was an English actor, comedian, composer, and pianist whose 40-year career produced multiple defining 1960s British comedy and 1970s and 1980s American film roles — particularly his 1981 lead role in Steve Gordon's Arthur, for which he received the 1982 Best Actor Academy Award nomination. He was born Dudley Stuart John Moore on April 19, 1935, in Charing Cross Hospital, London. His father John Moore was a British Rail electrician and his mother Ada Francis Hughes was a homemaker. He was born with bilateral clubfoot and a deformed left leg (which shaped his subsequent later biographical narrative — and ultimately limited his adult height to 5 feet 2 inches).

His education at Magdalen College, Oxford (B.A. and B.Mus. in music, 1958) launched his early-career British comedy and music engagement. His 1960 Edinburgh Festival Fringe revue Beyond the Fringe with Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, and Jonathan Miller — and the subsequent 1960–1964 London and New York Broadway runs of the revue — launched his early-1960s British satirical-comedy public profile. His 1965 BBC TV series Not Only... But Also with Peter Cook (across three series, 1965–1970) produced one of the defining 1960s British TV comedy series.

His 1969 American film breakthrough came in Stanley Donen's Bedazzled (in which he co-wrote and starred opposite Peter Cook) and his subsequent 1979 American film breakthrough in Blake Edwards's 10 (opposite Bo Derek and Julie Andrews). His 1981 lead role as wealthy alcoholic playboy Arthur Bach in Steve Gordon's Arthur (opposite John Gielgud and Liza Minnelli) — produced his 1982 Best Actor Academy Award nomination.

His subsequent 1982–1985 American film career produced multiple American comedy films — particularly Six Weeks (1982), Romantic Comedy (1983), Best Defense (1984), Micki + Maude (1984), and the 1988 sequel Arthur 2: On the Rocks. His 1999 progressive supranuclear palsy diagnosis shaped his later 1990s and early-2000s biographical narrative. He died on March 27, 2002, at age 66, in Plainfield, New Jersey, of complications of progressive supranuclear palsy.

His name Dudley derives from the Old English place-name meaning "Dudda's clearing." Dudley was a popular American boys' name through the early-to-mid-20th century.