George Cole Movies and Career Information

George Edward Cole, OBE (born 22 April 1925(1925-04-22)) is a veteran English film and television actor whose successful career has spanned over 70 years in show business. He is probably best known as portraying Arthur Daley in the long-running ITV hit drama show Minder and Flash Harry in the early St Trinian's films. Cole was given up for adoption at the age of ten days and adopted by the Cole family. He left school to be a butcher's boy but landed a part in a touring musical, and chose acting as a career. He appeared in a film with Alastair Sim and Sim and his family took in Cole and his mother when he was 15. They helped him lose his Cockney accent and he stayed with the Sims until he was 27. He began appearing in films in the early 1940s, debuting in the 1941 film Cottage to Let. He attributes his career to the British stage and film actor Alastair Sim, who became his mentor. Cole appeared in a total of 11 films with Sim, starting with Cottage to Let, and ending with the somewhat obscure 1961 independent film The Anatomist. He also acted opposite Laurence Olivier in The Demi-Paradise (1943) and Olivier's film version of Henry V (1944), but his career was interrupted by his