Curd Jürgens

Until Louis Jourdan's death in February 2015, he was the only actor to play the main villain in a "Bond" film starring Roger Moore to have died. He played Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Christopher Lee, who played villain Francisco Scaramanga in Moore's Bond film The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), has also since died.

Ranked #2 in a list by German tabloid "Bild" searching the men with the most sex-appeal ever (2005).

In 1987 his former wife, Hungarian-born actress Eva Bartok, claimed that their daughter, Deana Jürgens (b. 1957), was actually fathered by Frank Sinatra during a brief affair that Sinatra and Bartok had had in 1956.

He died from a heart attack in 1982, but had suffered a heart attack several years previously. At that time he claimed he had a near-death experience and went to Hell.

One of his most famous roles in the English-language cinema was as the James Bond villain, "Karl Stromberg", in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); it was Moore's favorite Bond film. Jürgens considered himself primarily a stage actor and often performed on the Vienna stage.

Though the world knew him as a cinema actor, he also directed several films and wrote several screenplays and an autobiography, "Sixty and Not Yet Wise" (1975).

, "Cornelius", the cowardly and treacherous trading company representative, in Lord Jim (1965)) for the rest of his life.

, The Longest Day (1962), the most expensive black-and-white film ever made) -- indeed, his last role was as "The General" in the miniseries Smiley's People (1982) -- and Germanic villains (e. g.

Always interested in multilingual European actors with good looks and talent, Hollywood beckoned the 6' 4" Jürgens, casting him in The Enemy Below (1957) as a WWII German U-boat commander in a duel with American destroyer commander Robert Mitchum. He constantly was in demand to play Germany military officers (e. g.

He came to Hollywood after appearing in the Brigitte Bardot hit And God Created Woman (1956).

His appearance in The Devil's General (1955) ("The Devil's General" (1955)), established him as a star of German cinema, and his role as Brigitte Bardot's older lover in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman (1956) (And God Created Woman (1956)) made him an international star.

Of Franco-German parentage, Jürgens -- who was born during the closing days of the second year of the First World War -- would abandon the country of his birth after the end of World War II: Jürgens became an Austrian citizen in 1945 and lived part-time in France. Jürgens entered the journalism profession after receiving his education, and married Louise Basler, an actress. Basler, the first of his five wives, encouraged him to switch careers and become an actor. He learned his new profession on the Vienna stage, which retained his loyalty even after he became an global film star.

Jürgens was sent to a concentration camp for "political unreliables" in 1944, due to his anti-Nazi opinions. It was this experience in Nazi Germany that led him to become an Austrian citizen after the war.

Ensemble member at the famous Vienna Burgtheater from 1940-53 and 1965-68.

In 1935 he had a severe car accident. Medics had to cut his spermatic cords, which resulted in a life-long infertility. His only child, Deana Jürgens was, as later revealed by her mother, Eva Bartok, not his own.

Curd Jürgens (commonly billed as "Curt Jurgens" in anglophone countries) was one of the most successful European film actors of the 20th Century. He was born Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens on December 13, 1915, in Solln, Bavaria, in Hohenzollern Imperial Germany, a subject of Kaiser Wilhelm II.