Charles Laughton (July 1, 1899 – December 15, 1962).
Charles Laughton was a talented stage and film actor born in England, who became an American citizen in 1950. He began his career on the English stage but quickly established a reputation for serious, high-quality character acting in a number of classic films. Some of his larger-than-life characterizations of historical or literary figures such as Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty and Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame are regarded as acting masterworks.
Laughton was also a screenwriter, producer, and director, and in 1955 he directed one of the most distinguished of Hollywood movies, the brilliant The Night of the Hunter. He received three nominations for the Best Actor Academy Award during his career, winning the Oscar once in 1933 for The Private Life of Henry VIII, the first English actor to win the award.
Donna Reed appears with him in the movie The Man From Down Under (1943). Laughton decided to use a version of his own accent rather than approximate an Australian one because "I know Australians are very sensitive about their accent, and I don't want to antagonize them by faking an accent that would sound like a London Cockney."