Lorre was born into a
Jewish family in Rózsahegy/Rosenberg,
Austria-Hungary, now
Ružomberok, Slovakia. When he was a child his family moved to
Vienna where Lorre attended school. He began acting on stage in Vienna where he worked with
Richard Teschner, then moved to
Breslau, and
Zürich. In the late 1920s the young 5' 5" (1.65 m) actor moved to
Berlin where he worked with German playwright
Bertolt Brecht, most notably in his
Mann ist Mann. He also appeared as Dr. Nakamura in the infamous musical
Happy End by Brecht and composer
Kurt Weill, alongside Brecht's wife
Helene Weigel and other impressive co-stars such as
Carola Neher, Oskar Homolka, and
Kurt Gerron. The German-speaking actor became famous when
Fritz Lang cast him as a child killer in his
1931 film
M.
When the
Nazis came to power in
Germany in
1933, Lorre took refuge first in
Paris and then
London where he played a charming villain in
Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. When he arrived in Great Britain, his first meeting was with Hitchcock and by smiling and laughing as Hitchcock talked, Lorre was able to bluff the director about his limited command of the English language. During the filming of
The Man Who Knew Too Much, Lorre learned much of his part phonetically.
Eventually, he went to
Hollywood where he specialized in playing wicked or wily foreigners. He starred in a series of
Mr. Moto movies, a parallel to the better known
Charlie Chan series, in which he played a Japanese detective and spy created by
John P. Marquand. He did not much enjoy these films (and twisted his shoulder during a stunt in
Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation) but they were lucrative for the studio and gained Lorre many new fans.
In 1940 Lorre co-starred with fellow horror actors
Bela Lugosi and
Boris Karloff in the
Kay Kyser movie "
You'll Find Out".
Lorre enjoyed considerable popularity as a featured player in
Warner Bros. suspense and adventure films. Lorre played the role of Joel Cairo in
The Maltese Falcon (1941) and portrayed the character Ugarte in the film classic
Casablanca (1942). It was Lorre's character who introduced the "letters of transit" (there was no such thing in reality) which became, in some ways, the dramatic center of the film. He played Dr. Einstein in
Arsenic and Old Lace (filmed in 1941, released 1944). In 1946 he starred along with
Sydney Greenstreet and
Geraldine Fitzgerald in
Three Strangers, a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning
lottery ticket.
In 1941, Peter Lorre became a
naturalized citizen of the United States.
After World War II, Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage work. In Germany he co-wrote, directed and starred in
Der Verlorene (
The Lost One) (1951), a critically acclaimed art film in the
film noir style. He then returned to the United States where he appeared as a character actor in television and feature films, often spoofing his former "creepy" image. In 1954, he had the distinction of becoming the first actor to play a
James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a television adaptation of
Casino Royale, opposite
Barry Nelson as an American
James Bond. (In the spoof-film version of
Casino Royale,
Ronnie Corbett comments that
SPECTRE includes among its agents not only Le Chiffre, but also "Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi.") Also in 1954, Lorre starred alongside
Kirk Douglas and
James Mason in the hit-classic
20,000 Leagues under the Sea. In the early 1960s he worked with
Roger Corman on several low-budgeted, tongue-in-cheek, and very popular films.
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