The elusive Peter Sellers, man of many hats

Chalk it up to sad irony: If Peter Sellers hadn’t been so personally troubled, he might not have been so professionally brilliant.

Renowned for characters as diverse as inept Inspector Jacques Clouseau and dangerous Dr. Strangelove, the late British actor is recalled in the cleverly stylized new HBO movie “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers” on Sunday.

Made in association with England’s BBC, the film boasts a title performance by Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush (“Shine”), who mimics famous Sellers performances in director Stephen Hopkins’ (“Lost in Space”) re-creations of classic screen scenes likely to please most film buffs.

After making his mark in “The Goon Show” on BBC Radio in the 1950s, Sellers immersed himself in movie work, making it difficult for first wife Anne (played by Emily Watson) and others in his private life to get and stay close to him.

Steered by a psychic (portrayed by Stephen Fry), he took parts that eventually put him on the radar of director Blake Edwards (John Lithgow) during casting of the first “Pink Panther” comedy and then on the mind of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Tucci) for the dark satire “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

Sellers’ continued success didn’t make dealing with him any easier, as discovered by later wife Britt Ekland (Charlize Theron) and Edwards, with whom Sellers had a career renewal by reprising Clouseau in several 1970s “Pink Panther” sequels. Another was in the works when Sellers died of a heart attack in 1980 at age 54.

Based on a book by Roger Lewis, the biography also features Miriam Margolyes as Sellers’ hard-driving mother, veteran British character actor Peter Vaughan as his father and Sonia Aquino as early Sellers costar and crush Sophia Loren.

The bouncy opening titles belie the darker moments essential to “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.” One of the picture’s storytelling devices lets Sellers “become” other people in his life, portraying them the way he wished they’d been.

Despite his admiration of Sellers’ talent, Rush initially turned down the offer to play him. “I thought, ‘I’m Australian, and he was British. And stouter and shorter than I am. And hairier.’ There were just so many things.

“Then a year later, HBO came back to me.... I was filming ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’ and just felt a little cockier and a little braver.... I thought, ‘You’re a character actor. This is a character actor’s dream script. Someone’s going to play it. Give it your best shot, be prepared to fall very badly on your face, and have a ball.’ Once I got over the cowardice and vanity, we did have a riot of a time making it.”

Rush recalls Sellers as “a character who claims to have had no personality of his own, so that sets up a challenge for you as an actor, because you can’t play him as a blank. Curiously enough, the film is written and directed to be like a Peter Sellers film in the way he might have made a film of his own life. He documented his life closely with a lot of home movie footage, so that quality is also in there. I’m able to address the camera; Peter Sellers was not emotionally that articulate, but he gets to have these monologues. To me, that’s where the character kind of comes flooding out.”

Director Hopkins, an avowed Sellers devotee, relished the chance to duplicate some of the performer’s movie milestones. He says, “There’s a ‘Dr. Strangelove’ sequence, the war room, which we ended up shooting on the same stage originally used at Shepperton Studios. We found the plans for the set. It’s so interesting to go inside not only that actor’s mind but also Kubrick’s mind. It’s obviously a filmmaker’s dream to pull off absolute accuracy if you can.”

That goes for Sellers’ off-screen life too. “I’ve spoken to members of his family and people who were very close to him who have seen the film,” Hopkins says, “and they said the emotional accuracy is very clear. There’s something about the rhythm and the style of it that explains his extreme swings in mood.”

The essence of Sellers may be best summed up in the HBO movie by a scene aboard an airplane. A fellow passenger inquires, “Excuse me. Aren’t you Peter Sellers?” Clearly uncomfortable about being recognized, Sellers responds, “Not today.”

Indeed, Rush maintains, “I don’t know him any better at the end of the film. There’s still a great, strange, fascinating void ... but it’s a black hole that’s worth going into.”

Jay Bobbin writes for Tribune Media Services.

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What: “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers”

When: 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday

Where: HBO

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).