Karl Marsen in Night Train to Munich (1940), Victor Laszlo in Casablanca (1942) and Jerry Durrance in Now, Voyager (1942).

Born as Carl Hirsch, Karl von Hernreid converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1904[citation needed] due to anti-semitism in Austria-Hungary.

Paul von Henreid trained for the theatre in Vienna, over his family's objections, attending the Theresianische Akademie.

[3][4] While performing in a play at the Akademia, von Henreid was discovered by Otto Preminger, then working for the director Max Reinhardt.

Von Henreid went to London in 1937 to portray Prince Albert in the first British stage production of Victoria Regina.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, von Henreid risked deportation from the United Kingdom or internment as an enemy alien.

[6] In 1939, von Henreid had a major supporting role as German teacher Max Staefel in Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

[3] Henreid's first film for RKO was Joan of Paris, a 1942 war drama in which he played a Royal Air Force pilot trying to escape Occupied France.

[9] Moving to Warner Brothers in 1942, the studio cast Henreid as Jeremiah Durrance in the romance Now, Voyager, playing opposite Bette Davis.

Also in 1944, Henreid played a lead role in The Conspirators, about a Dutch resistance leader trying to escape Nazi agents in Lisbon.

[10] Henreid briefly rejoined RKO to play a pirate with Maureen O'Hara in the studio's 1945 release, The Spanish Main.

Returning to Warner Bros., he was cast in 1946 in Devotion, a biopic of the Brontë family in which Henreid portrays Charlotte Bronte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls.

[11] Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) then borrowed Henreid from Warners to play the composer Robert Schumann in the 1957 film Song of Love, opposite Katharine Hepburn.

[11] Henreid recounts that in the late 1940s he participated in a protest by some Hollywood actors Washington D.C. against the anti-Communist excesses of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Later, in the United Kingdom, he made the films Stolen Face (1952) and Mantrap (1953) He then went back to Katzman for the 1953 fantasy adventure Siren of Bagdad, playing a magician.

His directorial credits include American television episodes of: Henreid also directed the 1956 film A Woman's Devotion, in which he played a supporting role, Girls on the Loose (1958), and Live Fast, Die Young (1958).

In 1964, he directed Dead Ringer, which stars Bette Davis and features his daughter Monika Henreid in a minor role.