Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens (13 December 1915 – 18 June 1982) was a German-Austrian stage and film actor.

His English-language roles include James Bond villain Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Éric Carradine in And God Created Woman (1956), and Professor Immanuel Rath in The Blue Angel (1959).

During the war, Jurgens appeared in Operetta (1940) (playing Carl Millöcker), Whom the Gods Love (1942) (as Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor), and Women Are No Angels (1943).

Jurgens was now regularly in starring roles: Der Schuß durchs Fenster (1950), Kissing Is No Sin (1950), The Disturbed Wedding Night (1950), and A Rare Lover (1950).

He had a lead part Roger Vadim's film Et Dieu... créa la femme (And God Created Woman) starring Brigitte Bardot, which was a huge box office success internationally.

After an Italian movie The House of Intrigue (1956) Jurgens played the title role in Michel Strogoff (1956) which was another big hit, the most popular film of the year in France.

He did Bitter Victory (1957) with Richard Burton and director Nicholas Ray, Les Espions (1957) for Henri-Georges Clouzot then appeared in his first Hollywood film, The Enemy Below (1957), in which he portrayed a German U-boat commander.

Michael Powell wanted Jurgens to play Heinrich Kreipe in Ill Met By Moonlight (1957) but the Rank Organisation would not pay his fee.

An item in Variety in April 1958 said he was "well on the way to becoming another middleaged matinee idol in the Ezio Pinza tradition saying he'd "appeared in 89 pictures and an equal number of plays.

"[10] In Germany Jurgens was in Der Schinderhannes (1958) then for Rank, and he co-starred opposite Orson Welles in Ferry to Hong Kong (1959), which was a huge box office flop in England and America.

While promoting the latter he announced he had formed his own company Cinestar and would no longer make German films now that producers had set a maximum fee of $25,000.

[12] He did Brainwashed (1960), a Rank film shot in Germany, then Gustav Adolf's Page (1960) and Bankraub in der Rue Latour (1961), which he also directed.

Jurgens starred in Don Giovanni della Costa Azzurra (1962) and made Miracle of the White Stallions (1962) for Disney, Of Love and Desire (1963) for Fox, and Nutty, Naughty Chateau (1963) for Vadim.

In England Jurgens appeared in Hide and Seek (1964) then made Encounter in Salzburg (1964), Les Parias de la gloire (1964), the British Psyche 59 (1964) and Lord Jim (1965).

Later, in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), he played the villain Karl Stromberg, a sociopathic industrialist seeking to transform the world into an ocean paradise.

In 1966 he appeared in a short run on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre opposite Geraldine Page, directed by George Schaefer.