Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

otheruses

James Neville Mason (May 15, 1909 – July 27,
1984) was an actor born in Huddersfield,
Yorkshire, England who attained stardom in both
United Kingdom|British and United States|American
films.

Mason had no formal training as an actor. He
studied architecture at Cambridge University but
got involved in the theatre in his spare time,
before working at the Old Vic theatre in London
and with the Gate Company in Dublin.  From 1935 in
film|1935 to 1948 he starred in many British
Cinematograph Films Act 1927|quota quickies. A
conscientious objector during World War II he
became immensely popular for his brooding
anti-heroes in the Gainsborough series of
melodramas of the 1940s, including The Man in Grey
and The Wicked Lady. In 1949 in film|1949 he made
his first Hollywood film, Caught (1949
movie)|Caught, and then went on to star in many
more feature films and TV shows. Nominated three
times for an Academy Award|Oscar, he never won
one.

Mason's distinctive voice enabled him to play a
menacing villain as greatly as his good looks
assisted him as a leading man. His roles include
the declining actor in the 1954 version of A Star
Is Born, a mortally wounded terrorist in Odd Man
Out (1946), Brutus in the 1953 film of Julius
Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar, Captain Nemo in
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), a suave
masterspy in North by Northwest (1959), a
determined explorer in Journey to the Center of
the Earth (1959 movie)|Journey to the Center of
the Earth (also 1959) and Humbert Humbert in
Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962 movie)|Lolita
(1962). One of his last roles, that of a corrupt
lawyer in The Verdict (1982), earned him his third
and final Oscar nomination.

Mason died as a result of a myocardial
infarction|heart attack on July 27, 1984 in
Lausanne, Switzerland. He was cremated, and (after
a delay of 16 years) his ashes were buried in
Corsier-sur-Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. His old
friend Charlie Chaplin is in a tomb a few steps
away.

==External links==
* imdb name|id=0000051|name=James Mason
* http://members.madasafish.com/~jmas/ James Mason
Appreciation Society

lived | b=1909 | d=1984 | key=Mason, James