Unknown author · Public domain

An actor who became internationally famous, and permanently typecast, playing a child murderer in Fritz Lang's M (1931), a performance so unsettling it made him one of the era's most talked-about screen presences. He left Germany when Hitler came to power and rebuilt his career in Hollywood, becoming a fixture of Warner Bros. crime pictures alongside Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. In 1954 he played Le Chiffre in a television adaptation of Casino Royale, the first actor ever to portray a James Bond villain.