Anton Diffring

Biography

Anton Diffring, born Alfred Pollack in Koblenz in 1916 and died in Châteauneuf-Grasse in 1989, was a German actor who spent most of his career in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1980s. A character actor, he became known for playing Nazi officers in World War II films and villains in horror and thriller films, a niche that made him one of the most recognisable European supporting players of his era.

He studied acting in Berlin and Vienna before leaving Germany, but the exact date of his departure is debated, with some accounts placing it before the war and linking it to his persecution as a gay man. Once in England he quickly became fluent in English and for a time worked as an interpreter at the War Office. He made two brief uncredited appearances in films in 1940, but his screen career did not take off until the early 1950s.

His fair hair and angular features led to repeated casting as German military men in British productions about the war, among them The Colditz Story (1955). He gradually widened his range toward horror, with The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) and Circus of Horrors (1960), and took part in larger international productions, including The Heroes of Telemark (1965), Operation Crossbow (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), directed by François Truffaut, and Escape to Victory (1981), directed by John Huston. He also took the title role in the stage musical Mister Venus in 1958, which closed after sixteen performances.

His final performance was another Nazi role, in the BBC serial Doctor Who episode «Silver Nemesis» (1988), which he agreed to do because the shoot coincided with the Wimbledon Championships. He kept working almost until his death. Sources differ on the illness that killed him, citing both cancer and AIDS. Today he is remembered mainly for the officers and villains he played with skill in postwar cinema.

Key films

• Fahrenheit 451 (1966): Fabian, a role in François Truffaut's English-language film and one of his best-known international parts.
• The Heroes of Telemark (1965): Major Frick, a German officer in the story of the Norwegian heavy water sabotage.
• Operation Crossbow (1965): an uncredited SS officer in Michael Anderson's wartime thriller.
• The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959): Dr. Georges Bonnet, in one of his most remembered horror films.
• Escape to Victory (1981): the German match commentator in John Huston's film about a football match between prisoners of war and a German team.