Departacus

(Props to Tom for the header)
Peter Ustinov kept his Appointment with Death, passing away from heart failure at the age of 82. Equally comfortable with comedy or drama, Ustinov won Oscars for his work as Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus and as Emperor Nero in Quo Vadis?, was nominated for two others and played the truck driver whose lorry was hijacked by an escaping Miss Piggy in The Great Muppet Caper during a career spanning 60 years. Perhaps best known as Hercule Poirot in several films based on Agatha Christie novels, Ustinov was a gifted dialectician, being fluent in French, German, English, Italian, Russian and Spanish and passable in Turkish and Greek, among others. A gifted and witty story-teller, even in his later years while often confined to a wheelchair, Ustinov continued to raise money as a Goodwill Amabassador UNICEF, an organization he had devoted more than 30 years of his life to help.