Czech-born film star Herbert Lom, best known as the deranged Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus in the Pink Panther comedies, has died, according to British media. He was 95.
His agent was not immediately able to confirm the reports that Lom died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday. They did not specify where, but he had been based in London.
Born into a poor aristocratic family in Prague in 1917, he shortened his complicated name to Lom and appeared in a handful of locally made movies before emigrating to Britain before the outbreak of the second world war and making his home there.
There he built a career that spanned over 100 films and included more than its fair share of villains.
“In English eyes all foreigners are sinister,” he was quoted as saying resignedly in 1991.
He portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte twice, including in War and Peace in 1956 alongside Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn, and the King of Siam in the first London production of the stage musical The King and I in 1953.