**Peter Lorre** (born László Löwenstein; Rózsahegy, 1904 – Los Angeles, 1964) was a Hungarian-American actor, an icon of unsettling and complex roles.

His career took off in Germany with Fritz Lang's *M* (1931), where he played a child serial killer, establishing his image as a tormented and ambiguous character. Having fled Nazism, he established himself in Hollywood.

Here he became famous for playing enigmatic villains, often neurotic, devious, or pathetic, leveraging his large, expressive eyes and unmistakable voice. Among his most well-known films are: Hitchcock's *The Man Who Knew Too Much* (1934), *Casablanca* (1942) as Ugarte, *The Maltese Falcon* (1941) as Joel Cairo, and *Arsenic and Old Lace* (1944), where he also demonstrated comedic talent. Lorre was a master at portraying figures simultaneously menacing and vulnerable.