Leslie Howard Movies and Career Information

Leslie Howard (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943) was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939) and roles in Berkeley Square (1933), Of Human Bondage (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938), Intermezzo (1939), Pimpernel Smith (1941) and The First of the Few (1942). Howard's Second World War activities included acting and filmmaking. He was active in anti-Nazi propaganda and reputedly involved with British or Allied Intelligence, which may have led to his untimely death in 1943 when his airliner was shot down, sparking modern conspiracy theories regarding his death. Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg) and a Hungarian father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Forest Hill, London, UK, and educated at Alleyn's School, London. There was some Jewish background on both sides of his family. Like many others around the time of the First World War, the family changed their name, using "Stainer" as less German-sounding. He worked as a bank clerk before enlisting at the outbreak of the First World War. He served in the British Army as a