After clashes with Hollywood studio bosses over budget and workers' rights problems, Stroheim found it difficult to find work as a director and subsequently became a well-respected character actor, particularly in French cinema.

[5] Stroheim deserted his military service[6] and emigrated to America aboard the SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm[2] on November 26, 1909.

[7][8] On arrival at Ellis Island, he claimed to be Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall, the son of Austrian nobility like the characters he would go on to play in his films.

[2] Both Billy Wilder and Stroheim's agent Paul Kohner claimed that he spoke with a decidedly lower-class Austrian accent.

Two of Stroheim's sons eventually joined the film business: Erich Jr. (1916–1968) as an assistant director[11] and Josef (1922–2002) as a sound editor.

Additionally, Stroheim acted as one of the many assistant directors on Intolerance, a film remembered in part for its huge cast of extras.

Later, with America's entry into World War I, he played sneering German villains in such films as Sylvia of the Secret Service and The Hun Within.

In The Heart of Humanity, he tears the buttons from a nurse's uniform with his teeth, and when disturbed by a crying baby, throws it out of a window.

He is considered one of the greatest directors of the silent era, creating films that represent cynical and romantic views of human nature.

He cast the American actor Norman Kerry as Count Franz Maximilian von Hohenegg, a part written for himself, and newcomer Mary Philbin in the lead actress role.

However studio executive Irving Thalberg fired Stroheim during filming[2] and replaced him with director Rupert Julian.

Probably Stroheim's best remembered work as a director is Greed, a detailed filming of the novel McTeague by Frank Norris.

Von Stroheim shot in San Francisco with his actors in period dress and silent movie makeup while the city itself was represented in its modern form.

[17] The film was partially reconstructed in 1999 by producer Rick Schmidlin, using the existing footage mixed with surviving still photographs, but the original cut of Greed has passed into cinema lore as a lost masterpiece.

[18][19] Working in France on the eve of World War II, Stroheim was prepared to direct the film La dame blanche from his own story and screenplay.

Jean Renoir wrote the dialogue, Jacques Becker was to be assistant director and Stroheim himself, Louis Jouvet and Jean-Louis Barrault were to be the featured actors.

[20] Stroheim is perhaps best known as an actor for his role as Rauffenstein in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) and as Max von Mayerling in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950).

He appeared as a guest star in the 1953 anthology drama television series Orient Express in the episode titled The Man of Many Skins.