Vladek Sheybal
Encyclopedia
Vladek Sheybal born Władysław Sheybal, was a Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 character actor
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...

, whose career lasted from the 1950s into the 1980s. He was probably best known for his portrayal of the chess grandmaster Kronsteen in the 1963 James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

 film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 From Russia with Love
From Russia with Love (film)
From Russia with Love is the second in the James Bond spy film series, and the second to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Released in 1963, the film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and directed by Terence Young. It is based on the 1957 novel of the...

, a role for which he had been personally recommended by his good friend Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...

. He was also well known for playing Russian General Bratchenko in Red Dawn
Red Dawn
Red Dawn is a 1984 American war film directed by John Milius and co-written by Milius and Kevin Reynolds. It stars Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen and Jennifer Grey....

. Sheybal excelled in playing cold, sinister villains.

He starred in the 1957 film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 Kanał (credited as Władysław Sheybal), directed by Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Wajda is a Polish film director. Recipient of an honorary Oscar, he is possibly the most prominent member of the unofficial "Polish Film School"...

, before finding more lasting success in British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 films and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, usually cast in villainous roles. He also appeared as Holocaust survivor Egon Sobotnik in the landmark TV mini-series QB VII
QB VII
QB VII by Leon Uris was a best seller published in 1970. This four-part novel highlights the events leading to a life-shattering libel trial in the United Kingdom.-Plot summary:...

.

Other movie credits include: Casino Royale
Casino Royale (1967 film)
Casino Royale is a 1967 comedy spy film originally produced by Columbia Pictures starring an ensemble cast of directors and actors. It is set as a satire of the James Bond film series and the spy genre, and is loosely based on Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel.The film stars David Niven as the...

, Billion Dollar Brain
Billion Dollar Brain
Billion Dollar Brain is a 1967 British espionage film directed by Ken Russell and based on the novel Billion-Dollar Brain by Len Deighton. The film features Michael Caine as secret agent Harry Palmer, the anti-hero protagonist of the film versions of The IPCRESS File and Funeral in Berlin...

, Deadfall
Deadfall (1968 film)
Deadfall is a 1968 film directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Michael Caine, Eric Portman, and Giovanna Ralli, with music by John Barry.It is based on the 1965 thriller from author Desmond Cory....

, Mosquito Squadron
Mosquito Squadron
#Mosquito Squadron is a 1969 British war film made by Oakmont Productions, directed by Boris Sagal and starring David McCallum, with a memorable music score , which was composed and conducted by Frank Cordell.-Plot:During a Second World War Royal Air Force attack against German V-1...

, The Last Valley
The Last Valley
The Last Valley is a 1970 historical drama film directed by James Clavell. Set during the Thirty Years War, it stars Michael Caine as the leader of a band of mercenaries, and Omar Sharif as a teacher fleeing from the violence endemic to Germany during this period...

, Women in Love
Women in Love (film)
Women in Love is a 1969 British film directed by Ken Russell. It stars Alan Bates , Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson and Jennie Linden. The film was adapted by Larry Kramer from the novel of the same name by D. H. Lawrence....

, The Boy Friend
The Boy Friend
The Boy Friend is a musical by Sandy Wilson. The musical's original 1954 London production ran for 2,078 performances, making it briefly the third-longest running musical in West End or Broadway history until it was surpassed by Salad Days...

, The Wind and the Lion
The Wind and the Lion
The Wind and the Lion is a 1975 adventure film. It was written and directed by John Milius and starred Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith and John Huston...

, The Lady Vanishes
The Lady Vanishes (1979 film)
The Lady Vanishes is a 1979 British comedy mystery film directed by Anthony Page. Its screenplay by George Axelrod was based on the novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White...

, The Apple and The Jigsaw Man
The Jigsaw Man (film)
The Jigsaw Man British espionage film starring Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier and Robert Powell. Directed by Terence Young, it was based on a novel by Dorothea Bennett and the screenplay was by Jo Eisinger.-Plot:...

.

TV credits include: Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...

, Danger Man
Danger Man
Danger Man is a British television series that was broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. The series featured Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the program and wrote many of the scripts...

, The Troubleshooters, The Saint
The Saint (TV series)
The Saint was an ITC mystery spy thriller television series that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It centred on the Leslie Charteris literary character, Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like adventurer with a penchant for disguise. The character may be nicknamed The Saint because the...

, The Baron
The Baron
The Baron is a British television series, made in 1965/66 based on the book series by John Creasey, written under the pseudonym Anthony Morton, and produced by ITC Entertainment. It was the first ITC show without marionettes to be produced entirely in colour...

, The Champions
The Champions
The Champions is a British espionage/science fiction/occult detective fiction adventure series consisting of 30 episodes broadcast on the UK network ITV during 1968–1969, produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company...

, Callan
Callan (TV series)
Callan is the title of a British television series set in the murky world of espionage. Originally produced by ABC Weekend Television and later Thames Television, it was aired on the ITV network over four seasons spread out between 1967 and 1972...

, UFO
UFO (TV series)
UFO is a 1970-1971 British television science fiction series about an alien invasion of Earth, created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson with Reg Hill, and produced by the Andersons and Lew Grade's Century 21 Productions for Grade's ITC Entertainment company.UFO first aired in the UK and Canada...

(in which he had a recurring role as Dr. Jackson), The New Avengers
The New Avengers (TV series)
The New Avengers is a British secret agent fantasy adventure television series produced during 1976 and 1977. It is a sequel to the 1960s series, The Avengers which was created by Sydney Newman, and the new version was developed by original series producers Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell.The...

, The Supernatural
The Supernatural
The Supernatural can mean:* the supernatural* the song, "The Supernatural" by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, see A Hard Road* the book, "The Supernatural", by Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff, a book on the supernatural phenomena surrounding us, presenting scientifically structured arguments for the presence...

, Shogun, Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy, and Smiley's People
Smiley's People
Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy...

(1982).

In 1977 Sheybal won the Dracula Society
Dracula Society
The Dracula Society is a London-based literature and travel group with an interest in supernatural and macabre works of fiction, as exemplified by Bram Stoker's Dracula.-Children of the Night Award:...

's prestigious Hamilton Deane Award for his performance in the BBC play Night Of The Marionettes in which he played a sinister Austrian innkeeper whose life-size puppets were purported to have inspired Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...

's Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...

. Other recipients have included Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones...

 and Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...

.

Sheybal's final stage appearance was in the Pierre Bourgeade play The Eagle and the Serpent at London's Offstage Downstairs Theatre in 1988; he played Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

.

He died in 1992 from a ruptured aortic aneurysm
Aortic aneurysm
An aortic aneurysm is a general term for any swelling of the aorta to greater than 1.5 times normal, usually representing an underlying weakness in the wall of the aorta at that location...

 and was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery
Putney Vale Cemetery
Putney Vale Cemetery and Crematorium in London is surrounded by Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park, and is located within forty-seven acres of parkland. The cemetery was opened in 1891 and the crematorium in 1938...

.

External links

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