LONDON, March 29: Actor, writer and raconteur extraordinaire, Sir Peter Ustinov was a multi-talented performer, equally at home directing films, appearing on TV talk shows or engaging in humanitarian work.

He appeared in more than 70 films in a transatlantic career that spanned six decades. He wrote novels, short stories, stage plays and screen adaptations. And he combined his creative output with more than 30 years as an ambassador at large for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Ustinov was born in London on April 16, 1921, the son of a journalist father of Russian and German descent and a painter mother of Russian, Italian and French descent.

"I rather think of myself as ethnically filthy, and proud of it," said the actor, who made his home in multilingual Switzerland and spoke a half-dozen languages fluently.

Mr Ustinov's thespian talents emerged very early in his life, his biographer John Miller recalled Monday. "From the age of four, he realised his gift as an actor from doing impressions of motorcars so accurate that people would leap out of the way for fear of being run over," Miller told Sky News television.

Ustinov trained for the theatre at the Theatre Studio, making his acting debut at 17 in the role of an old man, and soon emerged as one of the most versatile talents of the British and American stage and screen.

His skills as a mimic and impersonator won him an Oscar nomination for his role as Roman emperor Nero in "Quo Vadis" (1951) and he twice won the Academy Award for best supporting actor - in "Spartacus" (1960) and "Topkapi" (1964).

Other notable roles were as a ringmaster in "Lola Montes" (1955), as Humphrey Bogart's comic sidekick in "We're No Angels" (1955) and as Agatha Christie's Gallic sleuth Hercule Poirot in several films in the 1970s and 1980s.

His several plays, including "Romanoff and Juliet" (1955, filmed in 1961), were performed in London and New York, and his movie directorial credits included "Billy Budd" (1962), in which he also starred and, most notably, "Lady L", starring Sophia Loren and Paul Newman.

Ustinov wrote most of the films he directed, and in 1969 he received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for "Hot Millions". Alongside such novels as "Krumnagel" (1971) or "Monsieur Rene" (1999) Ustinov found time to write a historical study, "My Russia" (1983).

His three volumes of autobiography, particularly the first, "Dear Me" (1977), were massive best-sellers. "If he was going to put pen to paper, it was to do something rather more productive than writing letters," Miller said.

While more demanding critics felt Ustinov was spreading his talents thinly, he continued to act as recently as last year, when he appeared in "Luther" and the TV movie "Winter Solstice".

Later in life Ustinov also gained an enviable reputation as a conversationalist and for his wit, receiving acclaim for his humorous lectures and one-man shows.

In 1993 he received the UNICEF medal for distinguished service. He was made Companion of the Order of the British Empire in 1975 by Queen Elizabeth II, who went on to knight him in 1990.

He married three times in his life, first when he was 19, then again in 1954 to the Canadian actress Suzanne Cloutier. Of his third wife Helene, Ustinov said: "She has made me into something approaching the man I once hoped to be, privately and secretly."

His agent Steve Kennis summed up Ustinov's personality: "He was a giver throughout everything, a wonderful warm human being at all times." "He would always see the bright side of something, even something that would be very annoying to him or to all of us around him," Kennis told Sky News. "He'd get over it and always find there was something positive to be gained from it. " -AFP