Frederick Valk (10 June 1895 – 23 July 1956) was a German-born Jewish stage and screen actor of Czech descent who fled to the United Kingdom in the late 1930s to escape Nazi persecution, and subsequently became a naturalised British citizen. Despite making his later career in the English-speaking world, Valk never attempted to shed his heavy Mitteleuropa accent in either his stage or film work, and it became a trademark, particularly in film where he was often the first choice for a role which called for a German or Central European accent.
It is said that those who talk so much on the stage shouldn't talk too much in private. No artist should talk at all, he should let his work speak for him.
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Fact
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Best remembered for his role as the cynical analyst of schizophrenic ventriloquist Michael Redgrave in the classic thriller Dead of Night (1945).
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Ironically fled Nazism in 1930s Germany only to be stereotyped as fearless, imposing-eyed Kommandants in British war pictures; later played doctors, kings and cabinet ministers as well.
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Played most of the Shakespearean leading roles and notable for his portrayal of Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice." His Othello has been deemed one of the most definitive--alongside Paul Robeson and Laurence Olivier, despite the fact that he spoke the lines with a thick Czechoslovakian accent.
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Married with two young sons at the time of his death.
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A Czechoslovakian citizen, born in Germany, who went on to become a British subject
$950,000
