Actor / Director Profile

Long-faced, emaciated-looking character actor with a thin moustache and an impeccable English accent who was typecast in a variety of villainous roles in the 1950's and 60's. The Edinburgh-born Dawson made his greatest impact in the 1954 Hitchcock classic 'Dial M for Murder'. He was excellent as Lesgate, seedy ex-Cambridge classmate of would-be wife murderer Wendice (Ray Milland). In the scene where Wendice blackmails him to commit the killing ("there were times I felt you belonged to me"), he is nervous and visibly torn between fear and avarice. Anthony Dawson gave similarly sinister performances in the 1960 thriller 'Midnight Lace', where he menaced hapless Doris Day, and the Terence Fisher-directed Hammer horror 'The Curse of the Werewolf', as Count Siniestro. In another film by this director, the James Bond classic 'Dr.No' (1962), Dawson played the geologist Professor R.J.Dent, a henchman of the title character, who unsuccessfully attempts to assassinate the hero then finds out to his cost what Bond's 'licence to kill' really stands for. Dawson was also the first screen incarnation of Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (in 'From Russia with Love' and 'Thunderball'), though the viewer only sees his hands stroking a white cat and hears the voice of Austrian actor Eric Pohlman. A highly capable, immediately recognizable actor, Anthony Dawson deserved better roles than came his way after the mid-1960's. He eventually ended up playing small parts in minor Italian films and European co-productions.