Gérard Tichy

One of the most familiar character actors of Spanish genre, horror, and exploitation cinema; Gérard Tichy was actually born Gerhard Johannes Alexander Tichy Wondzinski in Weißenfels, Germany, in 1920. A Lieutenant in the German Army during World War II, he was captured and imprisoned in a POW camp in Allied-occupied France, but escaped and fled to neutral Spain, where he decided to remain after the war ended. There he started his film career in the war epic Balarrasa (1951) and quickly became a prominent character actor in Spanish cinema, ultimately appearing in over 100 films over the course of his career. He appeared in numerous spaghetti Westerns, notably Sergio Corbucci's Companeros (1970). A capable (if not fluent) English speaker, Tichy also appeared in several international productions that were filmed in Spain, most notably King of Kings (1961) as Joseph, El Cid (1961) playing King Ramirez, and Doctor Zhivago (1965) as partisan commander Liberius. He passed away in 1992, at the age of 72.