Here's a lovely article on his remarkable life.
Remembering Sir Peter Ustinovby Sheridan Morley
Sir Peter Ustinov, who has died at the age of 82, was the jack of all theatrical trades and master of most.
He was an actor, playwright, designer and director, who resembled Orson Welles in the sheer scale and shape of his career.
The son of a journalist father and the stage designer Nadia Benois, he was born in Swiss Cottage, London, in 1921, but was always keen to point out that he was conceived in what was then Petrograd (later Leningrad, now St Petersburg).
His Westminster schooldays were unhappy, he was nearly expelled for writing plays during maths lessons.
He also had to overcome having a father and uncle who had flown with the German air force. Presumably that was where the joking began — as a kind of defence mechanism.
He left school at 16 but went on to write 20 plays, eight books and many film scripts. He also directed eight films, most notably 1962's Billy Budd.
Ustinov trained for the stage with Michael St Denis at the London Theatre Studio, making his first appearance in The Wood Demon in 1938.
"Ustinov gives the part of Pedrosa a sinister restraint which is acceptable," wrote the Times.
That was to keep him working throughout the war, notably at the old Players Theatre. His film career also started here with a semi-documentary called Mein Kampf (1940).
He co-starred in over 80 wide-ranging movies including One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), Spartacus (1960, for which he won his first Oscar) and Beau Brummell (1954).
He directed himself in the screen adaptation of his play Romanoff And Juliet in 1961 and picked up a second Oscar for Topkapi in 1964.
He was also Oscar-nominated for his famous Nero in Quo Vadis (1950) and for his script for Hot Millions (1968).
In 1978, Peter Ustinov stepped happily into the role of Hercule Poirot for Death On The Nile.
It was Poirot (he made two further films in the role) and TV documentaries, often about his beloved Russia, that kept him going in recent years.
His TV career yielded Emmy awards in 1957 for an Omnibus drama on Samuel Johnson, in 1966, for his performance as Socrates in Barefoot In Athens, and in 1970, for A Storm In Summer.
Ustinov was also a great conversationalist and TV chatshow guest who left behind him several biographies but only one memoir, 1977's Dear Me.
In the latter, he wrote of his peripatetic life, one which started as Peter Von Ustinov.
Of French, Russian and even Ethiopian origin, he was fluent in French, German, English, Italian, Russian and Spanish and could pass in Turkish and Greek, among others.
He was truly universal, with the ability to take on the accent and mannerisms of anyone he met.
He was also a set and costume designer, Durham University chancellor, rector of Dundee University and, from 1971, a tireless worker and propagandist for Unicef.
A citizen of the world, Ustinov came in the line of chubby, endearingly comical actors stretching back to Charles Laughton and forward to my father, Robert Morley.
The nearest thing to modern Renaissance Man, he was renowned as an actor, writer, raconteur, humorist, goodwill ambassador and, perhaps most important of all, humanitarian.
"Too many people," said Yehudi Menuhin, "think of Peter as a genial, theatrical man with just the talent to amuse.
"However, behind that facade there hides a most sensitive and compassionate soul, suffering with every deprived child on our Earth."
