Born Friedrich Strobel von Stein, he spoke fluent Czech, German, English, French and Italian, and was a leading man in European spy-movies and in Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz.

[2] In 1964 French director André Hunebelle discovered Stafford on holiday at a hotel in Bangkok and asked him "How would you like to make movies with me?"

According to another account "I married an Austrian girl in Bangkok in 1964 and among the bouquets at the wedding was one from a French film producer.

"[2] He followed this with the similar Agent 505: Death Trap in Beirut (1965) and a second OSS117 film, Atout cœur à Tokyo pour OSS 117 (1966).

Stafford made a macaroni combat war film in Italy, Dirty Heroes (1967) with John Ireland.

Stafford made two more Italian war films, The Battle of El Alamein (1969) with Michael Rennie.

These movies brought the attention of Alfred Hitchcock, who signed him in 1968 to play the leading role as agent André Devereaux in Topaz (1969).

The casting of Stafford, whose performance was found lacking by critics,[weasel words] was largely blamed for its failure.

In March 1970 Stafford claimed that Harry Saltzman wanted him to play James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service but he was unable to accept due to his commitment to make Topaz.

His last successes were the Italian movies Metti che ti rompo il muso (1975), White Horses of Summer (1975, starring Jean Seberg, his co-star from 1966's Estouffade à la Caraïbe), Werewolf Woman (1976) and the Spanish-Italian-French coproduction Hold-Up (1977).

[8] He announced he intended to make four films in Australia including one about the pyjama girl murder; Our Man in Sydney, a detective thriller, and Andamooka, about life on the Australian opal fields.