Born in Budapest when the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Paul Lukas built a transatlantic career that took him from European theatre to Hollywood beginning in 1927. His name is bound to 'Watch on the Rhine' (1943), an anti-fascist drama for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor playing a German resistance fighter pursued by the Nazis. An actor of marked accent and sober presence, he frequently fit roles of the cultured, mysterious or menacing European, as in Hitchcock's railway intrigue 'The Lady Vanishes'. His career spanned film, radio and television across nearly four decades, with late appearances such as '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' (1954). He brought to the screen a grave, continental dignity uncommon in the casts of the era. Read more