His cool demeanour and precise, elegant elocution[1] saw him cast as criminals or suave villains in his younger years, and professional men and nobles as he aged.

Highly versatile, he also proved a skilled comic actor in The Pink Panther franchise, playing the beleaguered Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus in seven films.

Lom’s other notable films included The Ladykillers (1955), War and Peace (1956), Spartacus (1960), El Cid (1961), Mysterious Island (also 1961), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), and The Dead Zone (1983).

[5] Lom's father, as a younger son, inherited little, supporting his family by variously running a printing business, a car repair shop, and trying to establish himself as an art agent.

He managed to escape being typecast as a European heavy by securing a diverse range of casting, including as Napoleon Bonaparte in The Young Mr. Pitt (1942), and again in the King Vidor version of War and Peace (1956).

He secured a seven-picture Hollywood contract after World War II, but was unable to obtain an American visa for "political reasons".

A few years later, he appeared opposite Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers in The Ladykillers (1955); and with Robert Mitchum, Jack Lemmon and Rita Hayworth in Fire Down Below (1957).

He starred in another low-budget horror film, the witch-hunting story Mark of the Devil (Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält, 1970), with unusually graphic torture scenes.

[9] Lom appeared in other horror films made in both the US and UK, including Asylum, And Now the Screaming Starts!, Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Dead Zone.