Charmed by Havers

Handsome (at thirty-eight he looks at least ten years younger) and wellborn (the son of former lord chancellor Sir Michael), the very British Nigel Havers has starred and shone in several major feature films—Empire of the Sun, A Passage to India, Chariots of Fire—and a slew of upmarket sitcoms and plays. In Britain, his name has become synonymous with the word "charm." But there have been scandals: when Havers reportedly left his wife for an ex-model last year after the run of the television series The Charmer, in which he stars, the British tabloid press went wild.

Set in the late thirties, the series (airing on PBS this month) concerns the ambitious Ralph Gorse, a young man who knows what he wants and gets it, regardless of the consequences. Ralph is an impoverished (minor-) public-school boy who yearns to join the country's elite and seduces an impressive handful of beautiful debutantes and hapless, less-than-beautiful widows in his attempts to do so. Havers's portrayal of the cad is, of course, utterly charming.