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Llewelyn, Desmond (1914-1999)


Actor

Desmond Llewelyn, after being turned down for the police force, trained at RADA, entered films in 1939, was a POW for five years in WW2, and resumed his acting career postwar. He had played about a dozen film roles before being cast as 'Q', James Bond's irascible gadget-dispensing supervisor in From Russia with Love (d. Terence Young, 1963) - and spent the rest of his career in Bond films, dispensing with his Welsh accent for the role. The role brought him fame, but he regretted the loss of other opportunities. He was killed in a car crash. Bibliography Sandy Hernu, 'Q' - the Authorised Biography of Desmond Llewelyn, 1999. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film

More information

	FILM & TV CREDITS
	From the BFI's filmographic database

Related media

Selected credits

	Ask A Policeman (1939)
	A policeman is forced to commit crimes to avoid the sack

	From Russia With Love (1963)
	James Bond battles Russian dissidents for control of a vital decoding device

	Goldfinger (1964)
	Sean Connery returns as James Bond in what may be the best of the series

	Hamlet (1948)
	Laurence Olivier's multi-Oscar-winning Shakespeare adaptation

	Lavender Hill Mob, The (1951)
	A group of eccentric Londoners plot the perfect crime

	Pallisers, The (1974)
	Mammoth production of Trollope's 'political' series

Related collections

	Encyclopedia of British Film
	The exhaustive reference work from which this biography is taken

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