The massive brooding face and nose of British actor Percy Herbert is familiar to movie goers and TV audiences alike. A seemingly unlikely stage discovery by no one less than the great Dame Sybil Thorndike of British theater, Herbert moved into movie roles by the early 1950s. Initially fitting in as a featured cockney character, he nevertheless moved on to a wide variety of roles, especially as British and American soldier characters, some notable early ones being in _The Bridge on the River Kwai . In the course of over 90 film appearances, Herbert fitted in and lent to genres from fantasy and horror to history and drama with a sort of sturdy and matter-of-fact competence which makes him a most memorable big and small screen presence.
A British soldier in World War II, he was captured by the Japanese army and interned in a POW camp for 4 years. He once spent six months in the cooler for stealing a tin of corned beef.
It was his idea that the marching POWs whistle "The Colonel Bogey March" in The Bridge on the River Kwai .
Because he had first-hand experience of Japanese POW camps, he was paid an extra 5.00 per week by David Lean to act as a consultant on The Bridge on the River Kwai .
Made his first stage appearance in Julius Caesar at Stratford.
