Actor: Peter Lorre

Peter Lorre was twenty-six when Fritz Lang cast him in M as a child murderer, and his final speech, pleading that he cannot control himself, is among the most disturbing things in German cinema.

He fled Germany in 1933 and worked in Britain for Hitchcock before settling in Hollywood, where the accent and the eyes meant he was cast almost entirely as foreign menace.

The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca gave him small, precise, entirely memorable parts, and the Mr Moto series gave him a lead that has aged extremely badly.

He was a serious actor confined by an appearance, which he was open about, and his later career included self-parody he accepted with visible weariness.