Leslie Howard

British actor (1893–1943)

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Lived 1893–1943, aged 50United Kingdom

United Kingdom ActorsActor

Wikipedia
44 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1893–1943
Aged 50
Known for
Gone with the Wind
1939

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, but that casting was almost incidental — he was already one of the 1930s' biggest draws, a transatlantic star who wrote for The New Yorker and played everything from costume swashbucklers to Pygmalion's Henry Higgins. Then the Luftwaffe shot his plane down over the Atlantic in 1943, and the rumors started.

Biography

About

Leslie Howard Steiner was born in England on 3 April 1893 and built a career that straddled Hollywood and Britain, writing for The New York Times and Vanity Fair while becoming a fixture on screen. He earned Academy Award nominations for Berkeley Square in 1933 and Pygmalion in 1938, winning the Volpi Cup for the latter, and played the Scarlet Pimpernel, roles in Of Human Bondage and The Petrified Forest, and eventually Ashley Wilkes in 1939. When the Second World War came, he pivoted to anti-German propaganda films like "Pimpernel" Smith and The First of the Few — work the British Film Yearbo…

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