All All. Sign In. List activity. Lee Van Cleef. Actor Soundtrack Escape from New York His parents were of Dutch ancestry. Van Cleef started out as an accountant. He served in the U. Navy aboard minesweepers and sub chasers during World War II. After the war he worked as an office administrator, becoming involved in amateur theatrics in his spare time.
An audition for a professional role led to a touring company job in "Mr. His performance was seen by Stanley Kramer , who cast him as henchman Jack Colby in High Noon , a role that brought him great recognition despite the fact that he had no dialogue.
For the next decade, he played a string of memorably villainous characters, primarily in westerns but also in crime dramas such as The Big Combo His hawk nose and steely, slit eyes seemed destined to keep him always in the realm of heavies, but in the mid s Sergio Leone cast him as the tough but decent Col.
A new career as a western hero or at least anti-hero opened up, and Van Cleef became an international star, though in films of decreasing quality. In the s, he moved easily into action and martial-arts movies and starred in The Master , a TV series featuring almost non-stop martial arts action.
Actor Producer Director Yojimbo Toshiro Mifune achieved more worldwide fame than any other Japanese actor of his century. He was born in Tsingtao, China, to Japanese parents and grew up in Dalian. He did not set foot in Japan until he was His father was an importer and a commercial photographer, and young Toshiro worked in his father's studio for a time after graduating from Dalian Middle School. He was automatically drafted into the Japanese army when he turned 20, and enlisted in the Air Force where he was attached to the Aerial Photography Unit for the duration of the World War II.
