Inspector Clouseau

Inspector Jacques Clouseau, later granted the rank of Chief Inspector, is a fictional character in Blake Edwards' farcical The Pink Panther series. He is portrayed by Peter Sellers in the original series, and also by Alan Arkin in the 1968 film Inspector Clouseau and, in a cameo, by Roger Moore (credited as Turk Thrust II) in the 1983 film Curse of the Pink Panther. In the 2006 reboot and its 2009 sequel, Clouseau is portrayed by Steve Martin. Clouseau's likeness also appears in the Pink Panther animated cartoon shorts and segments, where he is known as simply "the Inspector". More recent animated depictions from the 1970s onward were redesigned to more closely resemble Sellers, and later Martin. Character Overview Clouseau is an inept and incompetent police detective in the French Sûreté, whose investigations quickly turn to chaos. His absent-mindedness and extreme clumsiness almost always leads to destruction of property: while interviewing witnesses in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, he falls down a set of stairs, gets his hand caught in a medieval knight's gauntlet, then in a vase; knocks a witness senseless, destroys a priceless piano, and accidentally causes a Scotland Yard superintendent to be shot in the buttocks, all within nearly five minutes. Despite his lack of judgment and skill, Clouseau always manages to solve his cases and finds the correct culprits almost entirely by accident. He is promoted to Chief Inspector over the course of the series, and is regarded in other countries as France's greatest detective, until they encounter him directly. His incompetence, combined with his luck and his occasionally correct interpretations of the situation, frustrate his direct superior, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus so intensely, Dreyfus is eventually driven to insanity. While Clouseau is generally oblivious to his own ineptitude and genuinely believes he possesses superior expertise and intelligence, he occasionally appears to recognize his limitations. As a police detective, Clouseau also insists upon wearing ridiculously elaborate disguises and aliases that range from the mundane (a telephone company repairman) to the ludicrously preposterous (a buck-toothed hunchback with an oversized nose); but even in these absurd disguises he cannot hide his characteristic inanity. Clouseau is a patriotic Frenchman; later films reveal he had fought in the French Resistance during the Second World War.