Moore -- born in Dagenham, Essex, England to working class parents in 1935 -- won a music scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study the organ. At university, he also studied composition and became a classically trained pianist, though his forte on the piano for public performance was jazz. After graduating from Magdalen College in 1958, Moore was offered a position as organist at King's College, Cambridge, but turned it down in order to go to London and pursue a music and acting career.
Fellow Oxonian Alan Bennett (Exter Colelge, B.A., Medieval History, 1957) had already recommended him to John Bassett, who was putting together a satirical comedy revue called "Beyond The Fringe". "Beyond The Fringe" was to be Moore's first brush with fame, along with co-stars Bennett, future theatrical director Jonathan Miller (now Sir Jonathan, who studied Medicine at Cambridge and was a physician), and Peter Cook, who was destined to become Moore's comic partner during the 1960s and '70s.
It was Miller who had recommended Cook for "Beyond the Fringe", in much the same way that Bennett had bird-dogged Moore. Cook, who had studied modern languages at Cambridge, had been part of the famous Cambridge theatrical, the Footlights revue in 1959, had subsequently gone to London to star in a West End revue for Kenneth Williams, "Pieces of Eight". This old-fashioned review was such a successful there was a sequel, "One Over The Eight". He was advised by his agent not to star in the fringe with the three others as he was a professional whereas they were amateurs.
Ironically, the great success of "Beyond the Fringe", which was a new kind of satirical comedy, would doom the very old-fashioned reviews that Cook had just tasted success in. "Beyond the Fringe" not only won great acclaim in the UK, but it was a hit in the U.S.. The four won a special Tony Award in 1963 for their Broadway production of "Beyond The Fringe" and there was a television program made of the revue in 1964. Dudley Moore was married four times, to actresses Suzy Kendall, Tuesday Weld, Brogan Lane and 'Nicole Rothschild', and had two sons, one with Tuesday Weld and one with Nicole Rothschild.
Dudley Moore was invested as a Commander of the Order of The British Empire (one step below knighthood) in June 2001. Moore personally attended the ceremony at Buckingham Palace to accept his CBE from Prince Charles, despite being unable to speak and being wheelchair-bound. He died in Watchung, New Jersey on March 27, 2002, from the pneumonia related to progressive supra-nuclear palsy. He was 66 years old.