Wallace and Gromit

Peter John Sallis was born in Twickenham, England on February 1, 1921. During World War II, he was an instructor at radio school at the Royal Air Force station in Lincolnshire. One of his students asked him to be the leading man in a local production of Noël Coward's Hay Fever for three nights and Sallis found his calling. After the war, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

He worked on the stage, on television, and in film. On television, he was the star of The Diary of Samuel Pepys, the voice of Rat in the animated series The Wind in the Willows, and the star in the BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine. He was best known as the voice of the cheese-loving Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit Claymation stop-motion animated films including A Grand Day Out and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. His autobiography, Fading Into the Limelight, was published in 2006. He died on June 2, 2017 at the age of 96.

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