Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943), better known by his stage name Leslie Howard, was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. One of his best-known roles was as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939) along with his roles in Berkeley Square (1933), Of Human Bondage (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938) and Intermezzo (1939).
He was born to an English-Jewish mother, ...
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Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943), better known by his stage name Leslie Howard, was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. One of his best-known roles was as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939) along with his roles in Berkeley Square (1933), Of Human Bondage (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938) and Intermezzo (1939).
He was born to an English-Jewish mother, Lillian (née Blumberg) and a Hungarian-Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Forest Hill, London, United Kingdom, and educated at Dulwich College, London. (In later years, Howard usually listed his birth name as Stainer despite clear records of the correct spelling. His sister Doris also used the surname Stainer.) He worked as a bank clerk before enlisting at the outbreak of World War I. He served in the British Army as a subaltern in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, but suffered severe shell shock, which led to him relinquishing his commission...
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