Peter Sellers Movies

sellersWant to know the best Peter Sellers movies?  How about the worst Peter Sellers movies?  Curious about Peter Sellers’s box office grosses or which Peter Sellers movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Peter Sellers movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Peter Sellers (1925-1980) was an English 3-time Oscar® nominated film actor, comedian and singer. Sellers was known throughout the world for his role as Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies.  His IMDb page shows 90 acting credits from 1950 to 1982. This page will rank 48 Peter Sellers movies.  Movies will be ranked from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters in North America were not included in the rankings.

Drivel part of the page:  (1) This Peter Sellers page comes from a request by Brando90, Wayne S. & Flora. (2) I have great memories of seeing 1976’s The Pink Panther Strikes Back in theaters with my father….I remembering laughing so hard my stomach hurt.  (3) Sadly while researching this page I saw that Burt Kwouk, who played Cato Fong in the Pink Panther movies, just passed away a few days ago (May 24th, 2016)….RIP Cato.  (4)   Since many of Peter Sellers’ movies were made in England and only received limited release in North America….we had to come up with his box office grosses in a different way in over half of his movies.  Knowing that none of Sellers’ England movies hit the $1 million box office rental mark we knew the ceiling for his box office grosses.  So using reverse engineering and international box office numbers from BoxOfficeStory.com we created an equation to come up with an estimated North American box office gross.   So if you see “trivia” in the Box Office Rank By Year column in the following table please know that is our “best guess”.  If you see an actually ranking, please know we feel very confident in our box office gross number.

Peter Sellers appeared in 6 Pink Panther movies
Peter Sellers appeared in 6 Pink Panther movies

Peter Sellers Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Peter Sellers Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Peter Sellers movies by co-stars of his movies
  • Sort Peter Sellers movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Peter Sellers movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Peter Sellers movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Peter Sellers movie received.
  • Sort Peter Sellers movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Peter Sellers Table

  1. Ten Peter Sellers movie crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 20.83% of his movies listed. The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) was his biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Peter Sellers movie grosses $57.50 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  31 of Peter Sellers’s movies are rated as good movies…or 64.58% of his movies.  Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is his highest rated movie while Casino Royale (1966) is his lowest rated movie.
  4. Eight Peter Sellers movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 16.66% of his movies.
  5. One Peter Sellers movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 2.08% of his movies.
  6. An good Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00.  16 Peter Sellers movie scored higher that average….or 33.33% of his movies. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) got the the highest UMR Score while The Great McGonagall (1975) got the lowest UMR Score.
Peter Sellers in 1979's Being There
Peter Sellers in 1979’s Being There

Possibly Interesting Facts About Peter Sellers

  1. Richard Henry Sellers was born in England in 1925.  His parents called him Peter after his elder stillborn brother.

2. Peter Sellers was best known for his portrayal of the hapless, accident-prone Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther movies.  His Pink Panther movies grossed almost $1 billion in adjusted North American dollars.

3. Peter Sellers has two performances in Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time:  67th is his role as Clousaeau in the Pink Panther movies and 75th is his role as Dr. Stranglove in 1964’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

4.  Peter Sellers was nominated for 3 Oscars®.  He was nominated for Best Actor for 1964’s Dr. Strangelove and 1979’s Being There. His 3rd Oscar nomination was for Best Short Subject, Live Action Shorts for 1959’s The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film.

5.  Peter Sellers was nominated for 5 Golden Globes®:  1962’s Lolita, 1963’s The Pink Panther, 1975’s The Return of the Pink Panther, 1976’s The Pink Panther Strikes Back and 1979’s Being There.  He won the Golden Globe® for Being There.

6. Peter Sellers was the first male to appear on the cover of Playboy Magazine, in April 1964

7. Peter Sellers starred in 6 Blake Edwards movies and co-starred with Herbert Lom (Chief Inspector Dreyfuss) in 6 movies.

8. Peter Sellers was married four times. He had three children.  He married his second wife, actress Britt Ekland, after only knowing her for 10 days.  His third wife, Miranda Quarry, is know The Countess of Stockton

9. Peter Sellers and music legends: Became friends with the group The Beatles, and visited them at Abbey Road Studios. Was given a tape of rough mixes from the “White Album”.  He was one of the favorite actors of Elvis Presley who always had Sellers’ Pink Panther films with him on the airplane while he was on tour.

10.  Check out Peter Sellers‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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45 thoughts on “Peter Sellers Movies”

  2. HI STEVE 1 Peter Seller was of course a prominent member of the ensemble cast of the Radio comedy series The Goon Show from 1951-1960. Throughout the 1950s he appeared on the big screen too in strong supporting roles, uncredited ones and voice-only participations – for example the voice of Winston Churchill in the 1955 Clifton Webb movie The Man who Never Was. Most of the films were British.

    2 However although he ultimately consolidated his cinematic fame in numerous high profile projects such as Being There, Dr. Strangelove and the Pink Panther franchise I always felt that initially his rise to major stardom in 1960 owed a lot to British politics at that time. That year he appeared in the political comedy I’M All Right Jack which pleased certain sections of the British press and establishment so much that it and Sellers were given a huge hype with for example the English newspaper the Daily Express serializing it in print over an entire week. The film was the highest grossing British film of 1960 and I see that you rank it No 6 in your Sellers video.

    3 Sellers was apparently so temperamental that directors and other co-workers found him extremely difficult to get on with and indeed it is said that in the end few wanted to work with him. I have in fact just watched a documentary about the British journalist and critic the late Barry Norman in which Barry mentioned certain actors that he almost came to blows with during interviews and the two that he seemed most displeased with were Sellers and DeNiro.

    4 My favourite posters in your video are The Millionairess, the eye popper There’s a Girl in my Soup, Trial and Error [aka The Dock Brief] Murder by Death, The Party, two raunchy ones Henry Orient and The Naked Truth, and the complete set of unusual ones for Dr Strangelove. Fine stills were the opening one of Fu Manchu, Peter with Loren, then in ones with O’Toole and Niven, and with the monkey.

    5 Overall I rated the video 96.5%. Bruce and you agree on all of Sellers’ Top 5 movies for artistic merit and of course your joint selection of Dr Strangelove as the No 1 is consistent with general opinion but it is a movie that I personally have never liked so in that respect “A plague on both your houses!” However although it may not cut much ice with you I feel Bruce should be congratulated on locating grosses for the British movies in the Sellers Cogerson table as we know that such stats can often be very difficult to find at times. Anyway a fine start to the New Year Steve.

    Reply

    1. Hi Bob and Happy New Year! Thanks for the review, rating, comment, info, trivia, comparison and observation, always appreciated!

      Glad you liked the posters and stills.

      I didn’t know I’m All Right Jack was so highly rated until I started this video, plus you say it was the highest grossing British film of 1960. I’ll have to watch it again.

      If I may ask what your favorite Peter Sellers film is? One of the Pink Panthers? Being There? Lolita? The Ladykillers?

      When I was young I really enjoyed The Pink Panther series and watched the last 3 at the cinema. My favorite of the 5 he did is probably the 2nd one – A Shot in The Dark.

      I left out Trail of the Pink Panther which was released after his death and was cobbled together from outttakes and deleted scenes from the previous films. It was a low scorer.

      Five of his films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Lolita, I’m All Right Jack, A Shot in the Dark, The Ladykillers and Dr. Strangelove.

      Six more scored 9 including Being There and the first Pink Panther.

      Strangelove was the highest rated on all the charts including Bruce’s.

      Being There was no.2 at IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. Maltin wasn’t impressed.

      Reply

      2. HI STEVE

        1 Enjoyable feed back as always.

        2 In answer to your question my favourite Sellers film would come from the Pink Panther series though I doubt if I could split them as I liked them all.

        3 I thought that Seller’s Clouseau was a peach. Alan Arkin played the character in the 1968 film Inspector Clouseau and Alan was once considered by film historians, critics and leading directors as one of the quartet of Greatest Actors of All Time along with Olivier, Mumbles and Paul Scofield. However in my opinion Arkin’s Clouseau was not a patch on that of Sellers. NB: in a TV interview that I once saw Liz Taylor lost her temper with an interviewer who unfavourably compared Liz’s Richard with Scofield.

        4 Also it must not be forgotten that in the original 1963 The Pink Panther David Niven was the star and Peter’s part was supposed to be just a supporting one but that Sellers then and subsequently made the Pink Panther franchise his own. The scene in that movie involving the pantomime horse was so funny that I sat with my brothers and father watching it on TV and all of us were in stitches!

        5 Anyway it has been nice having this first New year chat with you.

        Reply

        1. Thanks Bob. My dad was a huge fan of the Pink Panther series and he would laugh his head off at scenes such as the pantomime horse running through the streets at night in the first Pink Panther. Or the old man trying to cross the road while all sorts of craziness is happening including the pantomime horse galloping past him. aah good times! 🙂

          Steve Martin played Inspector Clouseau in a couple of films about a decade ago. I like Martin but it just wasn’t as funny as Sellers bumbling detective.

          Sellers on Goldie Hawn – “In the fullest possible meaning of the word, she’s so nice.”

          Sellers on Sophia Loren – “I was never in love with any woman as deeply as I was with Sophia.” (Cary Grant had similar ‘stirrings’. I wonder if it was love or lust?)

          Sellers on Sellers – “I’m a classic example of all humorists – only funny when I’m working.”

          Reply

          1. Hey Steve. Our dads had the same taste in movies. My dad laughed so hard when watching the Panther movies.

            Great quotes from Sellers. I especially like the last one.

            The first Martin Panther movie was alright, the second one was horrible.

        2. My favorite Pink Panther movie was the one where the world’s best assassins were trying to kill Sellers. I saw that one with my dad in theaters and laughed so hard at that movie. I always get confused with all the titles….especially since they all seemed so similar. The memory of me and my dad laughing together will always be one of my favorites.

          Reply

          2. Thank you THX1138…..I will have to check that one out….and let the little ones watch that seen. All this Pink Panther talk makes me think it is time for a Blake Edwards UMR page.

    2. Hey Bob…..great breakdown on Steve’s Peter Sellers video…..as well as on Peter Sellers’ movie career. I remember this page be very difficult to finish….as you say in comment #5…..so many British movies that barely made a dent at the box office here in the States.

      There is an excellent movie on Peter Sellers….starring Geoffrey Rush as Sellers….the part dealing with the filming of Casino Royale is very memorable…he got so mad he left the movie…..but the movie was such a mess…..it is hard to tell.

      Steve and I agree on all the Top 5…..just he has it in the wrong order…lol.

      Good information.

      Reply

  3. Just added Steve’s first You Tube video of 2018 to the page. The subject was Mr. Peter Sellers….glad to Steve is done with his break.

    Reply

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