Leslie Howard (actor)

Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Probably best remembered for playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind , he also appeared in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith and The First of the Few .

Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian , and a HungarianJewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Forest Hill, London. Lilian had been brought up as a Christian, but she was also of partial Jewish ancestryher paternal grandfather Ludwig Blumberg, a Jewish merchant originally from East Prussia, had married into the English upper middle classes. Howard was educated at Alleyns School, London. Like many others around the time of World War I, the family changed its name, using Stainer as less Germansounding. He worked as a bank clerk before enlisting at the outbreak of the Great War. He served in the British Army as a subaltern in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry but suffered shell shock, which led to his relinquishing his commission in May 1916.

Source: Wikipedia