Actor: Boris Karloff

Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in London and spent a decade in bit parts before Frankenstein in 1931, in which he is billed only with a question mark. He was forty-four.

The performance is pure physical work: the creature has almost no dialogue, and everything the audience understands about it comes from how he moves his hands and holds his head. The scene by the lake with the little girl is played with complete tenderness, which is why the cut version was censored.

Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Body Snatcher followed, and he was by all accounts a courteous and modest man who found the typecasting amusing instead of limiting.

He narrated and voiced How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which is how most people now first encounter him.