Klaus Kinski
Kinski was actually more famous in the 1980s for being the father to international sex symbol Nastassja Kinski. He should, though, have been famous for his incredible output of movies, having appeared in more than one hundred and thirty of them. He was a favorite leading man of Werner Herzog, appearing in five of the director's most successful films. He was a controversial figure primarily for the epic tantrums he would throw on set; even his friend Herzog admitted to wanting to kill him on several occasions.
Kinski's most successful role could have been as the lead German villain in Raiders of the Lost Ark; he did not take the role when it was offered, telling Steven Spielberg that his script terribly boring. Spielberg did not offer him a role in the sequel.
Isabelle Adjani
Adjani is one of France's leading actresses, and also the only actress to ever have won five Cesar Awards. She was a mere nineteen years old when she received her first Academy Award nomination in the Best Actress category, at the time, the youngest nominee in this category in the history of the awards. Although her native language is French, and she speaks fluently in English, Adjani also had to film the role of Lucy in German, because it was decided that Kinski was a more convincing Dracula in his native language.
Bruno Ganz
Swiss actor Ganz made a career out of German language movies and television series that lasted over fifty years. Another actor frequently cast by Herzog, he enjoyed a far more pleasant relationship with the director than co-star Kinski. He was also cast often by director Francis Ford Coppola. He died in February 2019 at the age of seventy seven.
Roland Topor
Toper was not best known for his work as an actor; in fact, he was a critically acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator who had fled from the Nazis in the late 1930s with his family, hiding with his family just north of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. His role as Renfield in Nosferatu was easily his most famous.
Walter Ladengast
The role of Van Helsing turned out to be Ladengast's last; his career began in 1928, and he appeared in seventy-two films over the next fifty-two years.
