Did Peter Sellers do the most likable portrayal of a paedophile in Anglo-American cinema?
(Sorry, whole title didn't fit FA's allowed character length)

I've just seen Stanley Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Nabokov's Lolita, starring James Mason as Humbert Humbert. Both the novel and its two adaptations are notorious for "Humbert's despicable denial and advocation of his sick obsessions with little girls", which is why "he creates a Lolita in his dreams that has nothing in common with the real girl at all".

A character hardly anybody ever seems to notice is that played by Peter Sellers, a character named Clare Quilty. Most people who notice the character of Quincy at all do so only because Sellers would go on to star in Kubrick's next film, the 4-times Oscar-nominated satire Dr. Strangelove and hence, all they do is compare Sellers's earlier role with that of the mad German scientist everyone knows. It is suggested that Humbert and Lolita first have sex when she is 14 in the film and 12 in the book, but towards the end, Lolita tells Humbert that she "had it going" with Quincy "long before that", and that's why she can't love Humbert, only Quincy. Many people might say that "have it going" could mean just about anything, but on the other hand they wouldn't go as far as saying that Humbert and Lolita didn't have sex, and yet Lolita pretty much makes it clear to Humbert that he left her pretty unimpressed because of what went on between Quincy and her earlier.

My guess is that people never noticed Peter Sellers's character much, and in wider culture only refer to Humbert as "the typical paedophile" because of their pretty opposite characterizations. Humbert is characterized as an unlikable, bumbling, jealous, possessive control freak obsessed about Lolita whom he "promises" himself to as the only person in his life.

Quincy, on the other hand, is shown as a liberal, smart, free-thinking, attractive bohemian, artist, and Sellers-like lovable trickster with many love affairs who pretty much saves Lolita from Humbert. Not only is Quincy married, Sellers himself later referred to the character as "partly homosexual": At one time under the guise of getting him a role as an actor, he appears to so obtrusively yet charmingly engage in entirely unrelated, yet intent prolonged chatter with a male receptionist whom he's just met as to suggest rather forward flirting behavior with the man. Further, he apparently knows no such thing as possessiveness and obsessive jealousy as does Humbert, and doesn't force Lolita to stay with her when she decides to leave his free-spirited artists commune. Finally, Kubrick even encouraged Sellers to base his interpretation of Quincy upon Jazz musician and producer Norman Granz who as a white was known as an outspoken supporter of the black civil rights movement, whereupon Kubrick even went so far as to have Granz record Quincy's lines from the script for Sellers to study his voice and mannerisms. With no sudden plot twist of turning "evil" and unlikable in appearance (notice the contradictions between the character's characterization and how, in contrast, his acts would be traditionally perceived!) sometime throughout the movie, Sellers thus appears to me throughout the whole film to have given Anglo-American cinema's most likable portrayal of a paedophile until today.

To me those seem the reasons as to why most people prefer to ignore Quincy's earlier relations with Lolita, or even completely miss his character's involvement in the story overall, and only obsessively focus upon the character of Humbert as "Lolita's abuser" and "the typical paedophile".

This is not about whether I think whether paedophilia, as a preferential attraction, ever shows in real life as an attraction of adult males towards younger females, whether adolescent, puberal, or pre-puberal, as it does with Humbert or Quincy in Kubrick's film or Nabokov's novel. It's about that most people seeing the film or reading the book consider a man, such as Humbert or Quincy, having sex with a 14-year-old or 12-year-old (or, as in Quincy's case, "long before that", whatever that may mean) a paedophile, Sellers's rather likable portrayal of his character, and the fact that most people can't believe that somebody having sex with someone aged 14 or younger could be so likable, gentle, and permissive as Quincy is portrayed (as long as no clumsy Humbert could invite trouble and public scandal for everyone involved and thus has to be quietly removed from the equation).

Speaking of Nabokov, interestingly enough he hid his own name in the novel, which appears in an anagram as the name of Quincy's wife. Thus, the man Nabokov's name for Quincy's wife is in sharp contrast with a rather female sounding handle of Clare Quilty for Sellers's character that phonetically closely resembles one that Nabokov considered fitting for a type that he saw ignorant society usually de-"clare guilty" while overall presenting the character as one of the most likable in his narrative.