Three years later, following a series of controversial government prosecutions, he was assassinated outside the King David Hotel and buried in the Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion.

[8] On the night of 23/24 September 1942, his Handley Page Halifax DT508[9] bomber took part in an air raid on the U-boat pens at Flensburg, Germany.

Elliott and four of his crewmen survived, and he spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft VIIIb, a prisoner-of-war camp in Lamsdorf (now Łambinowice), Silesia.

[10][11] After making his film debut in Dear Mr. Prohack (1949) Elliott went on to play a wide range of parts, including an officer in The Cruel Sea (1953), and often ineffectual and occasionally seedy characters, including the criminal abortionist in Alfie (1966) and the washed-up film director in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974).

Elliott made many television appearances, which included plays by Dennis Potter such as Follow the Yellow Brick Road (1972), Brimstone and Treacle, (1976) and Blade on the Feather (1980).

A photograph of his character appears in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and a reference is made to Brody's death.

In 1988 Elliott played the Russian mole Povin, around whom the entire plot revolves, in the television miniseries Codename: Kyril.

[13] He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn and Harold Gould in the television film Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986) and with Nicole Kidman in Bangkok Hilton (1989).

His scene-stealing abilities led Gabriel Byrne, his co-star in Defence of the Realm, to say, "Never act with children, dogs, or Denholm Elliott.

"[16] Secretly bisexual,[17] Elliott was married twice: first to actress Virginia McKenna for a few months in 1954, and later in an open marriage to American actress Susan Robinson, with whom he had two children, Mark and Jennifer (b. Manhattan, New York, USA 8 June 1964), the latter of whom committed suicide at her father's home in Santa Eulària des Riu on Ibiza, Spain, in May 2003, after being exposed by the News of the World as a drug-addicted prostitute.

[18] Elliott was diagnosed with HIV in 1987[17] and died of AIDS-related tuberculosis at his home in Santa Eulària des Riu on Ibiza, on 6 October 1992 at the age of 70.

Tributes were paid by actors Donald Sinden and Peter Ustinov, the dramatist Dennis Potter, and Virginia McKenna.