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Arts feature

Don’t believe Orson Welles, says his biographer Simon Callow — especially when he calls himself a failure

On the centenary of his birth, we celebrate the all-embracing genius of the great director, actor, theatre maker and story-teller

9 May 2015

9:00 AM

9 May 2015

9:00 AM

Orson Welles would have been 100 this month. When he died in 1985, aged 70, the wonder was that he had lasted so long. His bulk was so immense, his productivity so prodigious in so many areas, his temperament so exorbitant, that he seemed to have been part of the landscape for ever.

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Orson Welles’s ‘Chimes at Midnight’ is in cinemas from 1 May. The BFI's 'Orson Welles: The Great Disruptor' season is from 1 July to 31 August. ‘One Man Band’, Volume 3 of Simon Callow’s biography of Welles, is published in November by Cape. 

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