Conrad Veidt (1893–1943)

Conrad Veidt was born in Berlin to working-class parents. After serving in the German Army in World War I, he trained as an actor with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsch Theater in Berlin, where he quickly became a leading man. One of his earliest performances was in the Expressionist silent film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). In 1933, at the height of his popularity in Germany, as the nation's highest-paid movie star, Veidt made himself unemployable by being openly gay and by opposing the Nazi regime. He settled in the UK, where he perfected his English and became a British subject. He starred in a number of films, including The Thief of Bagdad (1940), before emigrating to the USA in 1941. Veidt is best-remembered today for a number of villlainous Nazi roles, especially that of Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942). He died suddenly at age 50 in 1943 from a heart attack.