Conrad Veidt was on stage for the first time at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1913. He starred in numerous productions by Max Reinhardt over the following years. In 1916 his silent film career took off and reached its first climax with the role of Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). In the following years Veidt embodied mainly exotic and demonic figures and became a star of Weimar cinema. Between 1926 and 1929 he lived and worked in Hollywood, returning to Germany when talking films began to appear. In 1932 Veidt was hired for a British production for the first time. In the year that Hitler came to power, he played Gessler in the remake of Wilhem Tell by Heinz Paul, a German-Swiss co-production. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was determined to keep the film star in Germany but Veidt – who was married to a Jew – decided to go into exile in London, where he showed unmistakably what he thought of the anti-Semitic German government in his roles in The Wandering Jew (1933, German title Ashaver, der ewige Jude) and Jew Süss (1934, German title Jud Süß). He lived and worked in the UK until 1940 and then, owing to the fact his latest film The Thief of Bagdad (1940) was to be completed in Hollywood as a result of the war, moved to the USA for a second time. There he played, as many other emigrant German actors, primarily Nazi roles. He shone once again in the role of the bad guy as Major Strasser in Casablanca, his penultimate film.

Selected works:
Different from  the Others, 1919
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920
The Man who Laughs, 1928
Jew Süss, 1934
The Thief of Bagdad, 1940
Casablanca, 1942