In Being There (1979), Peter Sellers played Chance, a sheltered gardener who has spent his life tending a garden and watching television, and who is suddenly cast into the world of Washington power. Directed by Hal Ashby, the film is Sellers’ quietest and most moving performance, built on stillness rather than disguise.
Chance speaks simply, about gardens and seasons, and the powerful people around him hear wisdom in his words. Sellers never explains the joke or reaches for effect; he lets the audience see both the innocence of the man and the vanity of those who use him. The performance earned Sellers an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and it remains the role in which the great impersonator finally disappeared most completely, by doing almost nothing at all.