Biographie

At his funeral, the largest wreath was from the porters at Heathrow Airport. There was a card which read, "To the finest Gentlemen who ever walked these halls. He made a porter feel like a King".

Became friends with Clark Gable during the 1930s. While Gable was serving in England during World War II, he used to stay over at the Nivens' cottage and spend time with Niven's wife and children. A few years later Niven's wife died in a tragic accident, and Gable did his best to comfort him. Niven said, "Clark was drawing on his own awful experience [his wife Carole Lombard 's tragic death] to steer me through mine".

During his war service, his batman was Pvt. Peter Ustinov.

After the UK declared war in 1939, he was one of the first expatriate British actors to go back and join the army. Although Niven had a reputation for telling good stories over and over again, he was totally silent about his war experience. He said once: "I will, however, tell you just one thing about the war, my first story and my last. I was asked by some American friends to search out the grave of their son near Bastogne. I found it where they told me I would, but it was among 27,000 others, and I told myself that here, Niven, were 27,000 reasons why you should keep your mouth shut after the war".

Once wrote that as a child, he felt superior to others. He attributed this to the fact that when reciting the Lord's Prayer in church, he thought for several years that the correct phrasing was, "Our Father, who art a Niven . . . "

I've been lucky enough to win an Oscar, write a best-seller-my other dream would be to have a painting in the Louvre. The only way that's going to happen is if I paint a dirty one on the wall of the gentlemen's lavatory.

[on Tables séparées (1958)] They gave me very good lines and then cut to Deborah Kerr while I was saying them.

[during an Academy Award presentation. responding to the unexpected entrance of a streaker] Isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?

I have a face that is a cross between two pounds of halibut and an explosion in an old clothes closet.

Can you imagine being wonderfully overpaid for dressing up and playing games?