The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

When a public clown takes off his mask of hilarity, the private face revealed is far too often disfigured by the exhausted grimace of tragedy. Success in the cinematic arts and failure in affairs of the heart are nowhere more pronounced and wrenching than in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004). An acknowledged comedic genius and reviled megalomaniac, Sellers is presented as a raging perfectionist who perceives and loathes himself as a toadying hack while simultaneously possessing the arrogance to dismiss all of his contemporaries and collaborators as untalented sucks. Sellers expended even less charity of affection, according to this depiction, upon his wives and children. He made us laugh until he cried, but inside he was crying all the time.