Actor Dudley Moore

Celebrity Q&A, People
on July 27, 2008

I recently watched the movie Arthur. Whatever became of Dudley Moore, and could he really play the piano?
—Ken Anderson, Greenburg, Pa.

Although acting made him famous, music was Moore's true love. At the age of 6, he took up the piano as a refuge from his clubfoot, a condition that required extensive hospital treatment and made him an object of constant schoolyard taunting. After his university years, he formed his own jazz trio, which recorded its first album in 1963. He went on to compose movie soundtracks, write and act in a well-known British comedy revue, and eventually became a Hollywood star in Arthur and 10, in which he played a composer dealing with a midlife crisis. He died in 2002 at age 66 after progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a degenerative disease of the brain, had robbed him of his speech and mobility.