Career: Holden went on to star in several minor pictures before serving in the United States Army Air Forces during the Second World War, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit. His big break came when Billy Wilder cast him as screenwriter Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (1950). The role earned Holden an Academy Award nomination. He went on to star in a number of acclaimed films, including Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Towering Inferno (1974) and Network (1976). He won an Academy Award for Stalag 17, and a Primetime Emmy in 1974 for The Blue Knight. He died in his Santa Monica apartment on November 12, 1981 at the age of 63.

Career: Loren became a huge star in Italy, and also began making waves in Hollwyood in movies such as The Pride and the Passion and Houseboat. In 1960, her performance in Two Women made her the first person to win a Best Actress Oscar for a non-English speaking role, and her success continued throughout the decade as she became one of the biggest movie stars in the world. After becoming a mother in 1969, she scaled back on her film work, although in 1980 she did play herself and her mother in the TV film Sophia Loren: My Story. More recently, she's appeared in the likes of Pret a Porter, Grumpier Old Men and Nine.

Career: Howard had small roles in the films The Way Ahead (1944) and The Way to the Stars (1945) before his big break in 1945, playing the stoic Dr Alec Harvey in David Lean's Brief Encounter. He went on to have an acclaimed film career, starring in The Third Man (1949), Outcast of the Islands (1951), The Cockleshell Heroes (1955), The Key (1958), Sons and Lovers (1960), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and Rawlinson End (1980). He died on January 7, 1988 at the age of 74.

Career: Upon leaving the army in 1948, Forbes quickly landed a leading role in The Gathering Storm at St Martin's Theatre. He went on to play a number of supporting roles in films, including An Inspector Calls (1954) and The Colditz Story (1955), but he increasingly devoted his time to writing and directing. He wrote The Cockleshell Heroes (1955) and I Was Monty's Double (1958), and directed Whistle Down the Wind (1961), The L-Shaped Room (1962), and The Stepford Wives (1975). He was in charge of film production at Elstree Studios in the early 1970s and gave the greenlight to The Railway Children (1970), The Go-Between (1970) and On the Buses (1971). He served as president of the National Youth Theatre, Writers' Guild of Great Britain and the Beatrix Potter Society. He was also a successful novelist. He died on May 8, 2013 at the age of 86.