Leslie Howard

Leslie Howard
Howard as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, 1939
Born	Leslie Howard Steiner (1893-04-03)3 April 1893 Forest Hill, London, England
Died	1 June 1943(1943-06-01) (aged 50) At sea off the coast of Galicia, Spain, near Cedeira
Cause of death	Aircraft shot down
Occupations	Actor director producer writer
Years active	1913–1943
Known for	Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) Professor Higgins in Pygmalion (1938) Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939)
Spouse	Ruth Evelyn Martin ​ (m. 1916)​
Children	2, including Ronald

Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943) was an English actor, director, producer and writer.^[1] He wrote many stories and articles for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair and was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s.

Active in both Britain and Hollywood, Howard played Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). He had roles in many other films, including Berkeley Square (1933), Of Human Bondage, The Scarlet Pimpernel (both 1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938), Intermezzo (1939), "Pimpernel" Smith (1941), and The First of the Few (1942). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Berkeley Square and Pygmalion.

Howard's Second World War activities included acting and filmmaking. He helped to make anti-German propaganda and shore up support for the Allies—two years after his death the British Film Yearbook described Howard's work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda". He was rumoured to have been involved with British or Allied Intelligence, sparking conspiracy theories regarding his death in 1943 when the Luftwaffe shot down BOAC Flight 777 over the Atlantic (off the coast of Cedeira, A Coruña), on which he was a passenger.^[2]