Peter Lorre

Peter Lorre (born László Löwenstein; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, active first in Europe and later in the United States. Known for his timidly devious characters, appearance, and accented voice, he was frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner. He was caricatured throughout his life and his cultural legacy remains in the media today.

He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before moving to Germany, where he worked first on the stage, then in film, in Berlin during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Lorre, who was Jewish, left Germany after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. Lorre caused an international sensation in the Weimar Republic–era film M (1931), in which he portrayed a serial killer who preys on little girls. His first English-language film was Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), made in the United Kingdom.

Eventually settling in Hollywood, he later became a featured player in many Warner Bros. crime and mystery films. He acted in Mad Love (1935), Crime and Punishment (1935), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Passage to Marseille (1944), and My Favorite Brunette (1947). During this time he acted in several films alongside Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet.

Lorre played Mr. Moto, the Japanese detective, in a series of B-pictures from 1937 to 1939, and was the first actor to play a James Bond villain as Le Chiffre in a TV version of Casino Royale (1954). He later starred in films such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Silk Stockings (1957), and The Comedy of Terrors (1963). Some of his last roles were in horror films directed by Roger Corman. In 2017, The Daily Telegraph named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.