James Stewart

Born: 20 May 1908
Where: Indiana, Pennsylvania, USA

Died: 2 July 1997 of a pulmonary blood clot

A screen icon best and most fondly remembered for It's A Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart was also a favourite in Hitchcock and western films.

The first movie star to enter the service for World War II, he became the highest ranking actor in military history, becoming a Colonel and then, in the Air Force Reserve, became a Brigadier General.

With plans to become an architect, the young Stewart was persuaded to join an acting club while studying at Princeton, where he met thereafter lifelong friend Henry Fonda.

He was a Broadway veteran when Hollywood beckoned in the Thirties, and made a steady rise to stardom under contract to MGM.

Taking third billing in best picture winner You Can't Take It With You, director Frank Capra realised he'd found his 'American Everyman' and went on to cast Stewart in Mr Smith Goes To Washington, which won Stewart his first Oscar nomination.

He won his only Oscar statue for 1940's The Philadelphia Story and humbly sent it home to his dad in Pennsylvania, where it sat in the window of his hardware store for 25 years. Ironically for a shop in Indiana's Philadelphia Street, the word 'Philadelphia' was mis-spelt on the trophy.

After the intervention of World War II, Stewart re-teamed with Capra for It's A Wonderful Life, winning another Academy nomination along the way.

Moving on to very different roles, his first Hitchcock movie, in 1948, was Rope, before he earned another Oscar nod playing up to a 6ft white rabbit in Harvey.

Stewart kicked off his infamous Westerns in 1950 with Winchester '73 and Broken Arrow. The best known of his toughman roles are still The Naked Spur and John Ford's Two Rode Together and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.

Hitchcock's original choice for the lead in North By Northwest, Stewart starred in three more thrillers for the director - he was wheelchair-bound in Rear Window, Doris Day's husband in The Man Who Knew Too Much and an edgy detective in Vertigo.

"I'd like people to remember me as someone who was good at his job and seemed to mean what he said," he reminisced in the Eighties.