Anton Diffring (born Alfred Pollack; 20 October 1916 – 19 May 1989)[1] was a German actor. He had an extensive film and television career in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1980s, latterly appearing in international films. Primarily a character actor, he often played Nazi officers in World War II films, and other antagonistic authority figures.[2]
Early life
Diffring was born Alfred Pollack in Koblenz. His father, Solomon Pollack, was a Jewish shop-owner who managed to avoid internment and survived Nazi rule in Germany. His mother, Bertha Pollack (née Diffring), was Christian. He studied acting in Berlin and Vienna, but there is conjecture about when he left Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II. The audio commentary for the Doctor Who series Silver Nemesis mentions that he left in 1936 to escape persecution due to his homosexuality. Other accounts point to him leaving in 1939 and settling in Canada, where he was interned in 1940, which is unlikely as he appears in the Ealing Studios film Convoy (released in July 1940, as the officer of U-37, in an uncredited role). His sister Jacqueline Diffring moved to England and became a sculptor.
While in England, he quickly became fluent in English and for a time worked in the War Office as an interpreter. Although he made two fleeting uncredited appearances in films in 1940, it was not until 1950 that his acting career began to take off.
With numerous World War II film and television productions being produced in England from the 1950s, Diffring's "Germanic" physical type of blond hair, pale blue eyes and chiselled features saw him regularly cast in roles as Nazi military officers in films such as Albert R.N. (1953) and The Colditz Story (1955).[3] Some of his other roles as German characters were in The Heroes of Telemark (1965), The Blue Max (1966), Where Eagles Dare (1968), Zeppelin (1971), as SS officer Reinhard Heydrich in Operation Daybreak (1975) and the football match commentator in Escape to Victory (1981), although he also played a Polish parachutist in The Red Beret (1953).[4] He played Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in the American mini-series The Winds of War (1983).[5] In the Italian war movie Uccidete Rommel, shot in the Egyptian desert in 1969, he played the role of a British officer of the SAS.[6]
On stage, Diffring played the title role in the musical Mister Venus, opposite Frankie Howerd.[7] It opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre on 23 October 1958 but closed after only sixteen performances. In the show, Diffring sang two solo numbers: "Love Like Ours" and "Tradition".[8] The book was by Ray Galton and Johnny Speight, while the music was by Trevor H. Stanford (Russ Conway) and Norman Newell.[9]
He played a part in the TV mini-series Flambards as the aeronautical pioneer who assists William Russell (Alan Parnaby), second in line of inheritance to the Flambards Estate, who is obsessed with flying. Diffring's character was a German living in Britain shortly before the beginning of the Great War.[10]
Diffring died on 19 May 1989 from cancer at his home in Châteauneuf-Grasse, in the South of France, at the age of 72. In a 2002 interview, his longtime friend Arthur Brauss said Diffring had actually died of complications from AIDS.[14] His body was buried in the graveyard of St. Andrew's Church, in the village of White Colne in Essex.
