Neil mccarthy

Derren nesbitt
Arthur brauss
Anton diffring children

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Anton Diffring Biography

Date of Birth:
Oct 20, 1918Birth Place:
Koblenz, Germany

Biography

Anton Diffring was a German-born actor whose classical features and imperious demeanor garnered him numerous roles as a Nazi military officer, landing him parts in war dramas throughout the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. Born in 1918, Diffring fled Nazi Germany in 1936, settling first in Canada and later, after WWII, in the United States and Britain. Despite obvious allegiances to the Allied forces during wartime, Diffring, when he began his acting career in the '50s, was immediately typecast as a villainous Nazi officer, appearing as a haughty military taskmaster in such classic films as "The Blue Max" (1966), "Where Eagles Dare" (1968), and "Operation: Daybreak" (1975). Diffring attempted to break away from obvious villain roles, with stints in TV and stage acting, but the lure of film work proved too great. In 1966, Diffring starred opposite Austrian actor Oskar Werner in François Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451," a role that proved his mettle as more than just a character actor. With hi

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Anton Diffring was born Alfred Pollack in Koblenz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany on October 20, 1916. His father, Solomon Pollack, was a Jewish shop-owner who managed to avoid internment and survived Nazi rule in Germany. His mother, Bertha Diffring, was Christian. He studied acting in Berlin and Vienna, but there is conjecture about when he left Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II. The audio commentary for the Doctor Who series Silver Nemesis mentions that he left in 1936 to escape persecution due to his homosexuality. Other accounts point to him leaving in 1939 and settling in Canada, where he was interned in 1940, which is unlikely as he appears in the Ealing Studios film Convoy (released in July 1940, as the officer of U-37, in an uncredited role). His sister Jacqueline Diffring moved to England and became a sculptor.

While in England, he quickly became fluent in English and for a time worked in the War Office as an interpreter. Although he made two fleeting uncredited appearances in films in 1940, it was not until 1950 that his acting career began to take

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Anton Diffring; German-Born Character Actor

Anton Diffring, a German-born actor who portrayed a series of villainous characters that moviegoers loved to hate in more than 50 films and a like number of TV shows, is dead, it was learned Friday.

The Associated Press reported that officials at City Hall in Chateauneuf-de-Grasse, in southern France, said he had died at his home there last May 20 but his death had gone unnoticed until this week when the British newspaper the Guardian first reported his death but without detail. Diffring was 70.

Born in Koblenz and a graduate of Berlin’s Academy of Drama, Diffring performed on the stage in the United States and Canada before entering films in Britain in 1950.

The actor, who played a succession of Nazis and other nefarious characters in films such as “I Am a Camera,” “The Blue Max,” “Where Eagles Dare” and “Fahrenheit 451,” was first seen in “State Secret.”

Favorite Character

Over the years he became a favorite German officer character, some of them even kindly, but grew so tired of the type-casting that he left Britain for Rome in