Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson DBE (18 December 1908 – 25 April 1982) was an English actress.

She began her stage acting career in 1928, and subsequently achieved success in West End and Broadway productions. She also appeared in several films, including the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was nominated for BAFTA Awards on five occasions, and won twice, for her work in the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), and for the television production Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, a BBC Play for Today broadcast in 1973.

Much of her later work was for television, and she continued performing in theatre for the rest of her life. She died suddenly from a stroke.

Born in Richmond, Surrey, Johnson was the second daughter of Robert Johnson and Ethel Griffiths. During her childhood, her family called her "Betty". Johnson's first public performance was in 1916, when she played a role in a charity performance of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid to raise funds for returned World War I soldiers. She attended St Paul's Girls' School in London from 1919 until 1926, and played in the school's orchestra under Gustav Holst. She acted in school productions, but had no other acting experience, when she was accepted to study at R.A.D.A. in 1926, and later spent a term in Paris, studying under Pierre Fresnay at the Comédie Française. She later recalled her choice of an acting career with the comment, "I thought I'd rather like it. It was the only thing I was good at. And I thought it might be rather wicked.”

Trevor Howard (29 September 1913 – 7 January 1988), born Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith, was an English film, stage and television actor.

Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith was born in Cliftonville, Kent, England, on 29 September 1913, the only son and elder child of Arthur John Howard-Smith, who worked as the Ceylon representative for Lloyd's of London, and his Canadian wife, Mabel Grey Wallace, a nurse. During his lifetime his year of birth was often given as 1916. Until he was five, he lived in Colombo, Ceylon, but then travelled with his mother until the age of eight, when he was sent to school at Clifton College, Bristol.

Howard attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), acting on the London stage for several years before World War II. His first paid work was in the play Revolt in a Reformatory (1934), before he left RADA in 1935 to take small roles. That year, he was spotted by a Paramount studio talent scout, but turned down the offer of film work in favour of a career in theatre. This decision seemed justified when, in 1936, he was invited to join the Stratford Memorial Theatre and, in London, given the role of one of the students in French without Tears by Terence Rattigan, which ran for two years. He returned to Stratford in 1939.

Rebecca Saire (born 16 April 1963) is a British actress and writer who achieved early notability when, at the age of fourteen, she played Juliet for the BBC Television Shakespeare series.

Saire was educated at Watford Grammar School for Girls but left at the age of 13 to join the Godolphin and Latymer School for Girls in Hammersmith, London. She is married to the actor Roger Allam, with whom she has two children.

She played Cecily in the highly acclaimed film, The Shooting Party.

Saire has written three plays for BBC Radio 4, all produced by Eoin O'Callaghan:

Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH (/ˈɡiːlɡʊd/; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937. He was known for his beautiful speaking of verse and particularly for his warm and expressive voice, which his colleague Sir Alec Guinness likened to "a silver trumpet muffled in silk". Gielgud is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.

John Gielgud was born in South Kensington in London to Kate Terry and Frank Gielgud. He was of theatrical lineage on his mother's side, being the grandson of actress Kate Terry, whose actor-siblings included Ellen Terry, Marion Terry and Fred Terry.

Gielgud's Catholic father, Franciszek Giełgud, born in 1880, was a descendant of a Polish noble family residing at a manor in a town called Giełgudyszki (now Gelgaudiškis in Marijampolė County, Lithuania). In his autobiography, Gielgud states repeatedly and clearly that his father was Polish Catholic, and mentions Gelgaudiškis as being his ancestral home whence his family and their surname originated.