Peter Sellers

Zounds.

Holy Cow.

I had no idea how big a star Peter Sellers was in his lifetime.

Some perspective - George Harrison said: "We met him at numerous parties and different things, but at that time we were more in awe of him because of our childhoods and the Goons (Sellers' comedy gang). We just loved the Goons. It was the greatest thing we'd ever heard. I remember thinking that we'd met all these film stars and presidents and kings and queens...But there were very few people who really impressed me."

Unbelievable. The Beatles were in awe of Peter Sellers.

And the list of people he worked with and hung around with was amazing, the creme de la creme of the entertainment world. Celebrity royalty. He even palled around with members of the royal family.

This guy was huge in England and an international film star/comedian.

He was also deeply screwed up.

Had all the money in the world, massive fame and the professional respect of his peers who revered his comedic mind, but he was unable to enjoy it. He was deeply neurotic, jealous of his women and abusive to his wives and kids.

He described himself as an empty vessel, saying repeatedly that he didn't really exist, that he didn't know who Peter Sellers was, that he only existed through the characters he played.

He starred in a movie late in his life called Being There. I love this movie. He plays a guy named Chance (who through misunderstandings becomes known as Chauncey Gardiner) who spends his entire life as a gardener for a rich guy. The only other thing he does is watch TV.

He knows nothing, is uneducated and uninformed. He does not exist as a personality. The rich guy dies and suddenly Chauncey is thrust out into the world, out into reality.

This happens and that happens and he ends up in the care of another rich couple. Eventually he becomes known, and famous, for saying essentially meaningless things that others mistake for brilliance. Things he has learned from watching TV; things pertaining to gardening. People take these utterances as advice and as inspiration, he is wooed by presidents and powerful people; people come to him for guidance.

And he knows absolutely nothing. His face is blank when he talks, there is little emotion in his voice. It is a cool story and an amazing performance.

A critic said: "The audience must believe that Chance is so completely blank that he could indeed seem to be all things to all the people he meets. Peter Sellers' meticulously controlled performance brings off this seemingly impossible task..."

The role resonated with me when I first saw it. Reading this biography really blew the ears off my head when I realized Sellers was essentially playing himself. What is more amazing was that he didn't write the screen play; the movie was adapted from a book written by Jerzy Kosinski.

When Sellers' became aware of the role, he knew he had to play the part.

The movie floored me because that is how I live my life. I won't say I don't exist but I will say that my essence is buried under two tons of concrete. I survive by going with the flow, allowing everyone around me to be themselves no matter how much it compromises me.

I hide the real me. Always and forever.

Knowing now how tortured Peter Sellers was, how he felt that there was no Peter Sellers, I feel like a kindred spirit and understand even more why the movie jangled my nerves.

I couldn't stomach the fact that Sellers beat his wives and was evil to his kids. One minute he would be loving, the next he would be throwing furniture around the house. He said things to his kids no father should say; he wrote them notes telling them he no longer loved them and that they were out of his life.

He bought cars like toys, always luxurious, expensive and fast. He bought mansions all over the place, moved on a whim from house to house and country to country.

His family's life was in constant turmoil.

When he died he left each of his three children only $2,000. His fortune went to his wife, Lynne, who was his fourth wife and over twenty years younger than him. Sellers' close friend Spike Millligan approached Lynne suggesting she should share the fortune with Seller's kids.

She refused.

She died at the age of 39 from drug abuse and booze; the fortune went to her mother.

What a twisted and cruel legacy to leave behind.

He undermined movie productions, got people fired, skipped filming when he felt like it.

He was the ultimate spoiled  celebrity.

Yet professionally he was respected by his peers and considered to be a comedic genius. His peers opinions of him were always guarded and multi layered; yeah he could be a pain in the ass but he could also be the funniest, the warmest guy you would ever want to meet.

A complex, talented, tortured, misunderstood, sometimes heart warming sometimes heartless man.

He died at the age of 54.

The book was an emotional roller coaster to read. At times I loved the guy, at times I hated him; at times I empathized with him; at times I thought of him as a monster.

The book ended in an odd way. Biographies are always a crap shoot; biographers tend to be full of themselves, interjecting opinions where none are warranted, working hard to communicate literary style at the expense of the story of a life.

This book (written in 2002) ended on a death note. Heavy. A mortality roll call of Peter Sellers' friends.

"David Lodge, Kenneth Griffith, and Graham Stark live in or around London. Roman Polanski lives in exile in Paris. Terry Southern died in 1995, Stanley Kubrick in 1999, Hal Ashby died in 1988. Michael Bentine died in 1996. Sir Harry Secombe and George Harrison died in 2001.
Spike Milligan died in February 2002."

Ultimately I cannot hate Peter Sellers. He was an immensely talented and sensitive human being who got swept up into a life so large he could barely negotiate it.

His relationships with his mother, who spoiled and controlled him even as an adult, and his father who was spineless and quiet, had enormous consequences on who he became.

He was a supreme comic who could never be happy.