Dirk Bogarde was a British actor, whose strikingly varied career makes him both a figure of unique respect in British cinema and a critical problem. The popular view is of a 1950s male pin-up, reaching stardom in such films as Doctor in the House (1954), who was rescued from a crippling seven year contract with Rank to become a serious actor in the European art cinema of Joseph Losey - The Servant (1963), Accident (1967) - Luchino Visconti - The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1972).

Certainly, the respect that he commands has something to do with his surprising ability to reinvent himself. More systematic criticism recognises in this ability at testing of male sexuality that extends across his work - a striking feature in a national cinema that is apparently so certain its masculinity. It appears in the sexualised delinquency of The Blue Lamp (1950), it is explicit in the homosexuality of Victim (1961) - both 'social problem' films directed by Basil Dearden - and it is most playfully camp in Modesty Blaise (Losey, 1966).

It also surfaces in a consistent strain of erotic sadism which is exploited by Losey in The Servant, by Visconti in The Damned, and by Liliana Cavani in The Night Porter (1974). If there is a case for considering actors as auteurs, Bogarde is probably one of the more interesting and complex of British auteurs.

For a leading British actor Bogarde has made remarkably few American films - Song Without End (1960), The Fixer (1968) and Justine (1969). By the 1970s he had become one of the most European of British actors, with important roles in films by Visconti, Cavani, Henri Verneuil (Le serpent/The Serpent/Night Flight from Moscow (1973), Alain Resnais (Providence, 1977), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Despair/Eine Reise ins Licht, 1978), and Bertrand Tavernier (Daddy Nostalgie/These Foolish Things, 1990).

Bogarde received British Film Academy awards for The Servant and for Darling (1965), and a BAFTA award for 'outstanding contribution to world cinema' in 1990. He was knighted in 1992.