One of the great movie villains, Lee Van Cleef started out as an accountant. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard minesweepers and subchasers during World War II. After the war he worked as an office administrator, becoming involved in amateur theatrics in his spare time. An audition for a professional role led to a touring company job in "Mr. Roberts". His performance was seen by Stanley Kramer, who cast him as henchman Jack Colby in High Noon, a role that brought him great recognition despite the fact that he had no dialogue. For the next decade he played a string of memorably villainous characters, primarily in westerns but also in crime dramas such as The Big Combo. His hawk nose and steely, slit eyes seemed destined to keep him always in the realm of heavies, but in the mid-'60s Sergio Leone cast him as the tough but decent Col. Mortimer opposite Clint Eastwood in For a Few Dollars More. A new career as a western hero (or at least anti-hero) opened up, and Van Cleef became an international star, though in films of decreasing quality. In the 1980s he moved easily into action and martial-arts movies, and starred in The Master, a TV series featuring almost non-stop martial arts action. He died of a heart attack in December 1989, and was buried at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills.


Per qualche dollaro in più (1965): $17,000

He was missing the last joint of his middle finger, a disfigurement prominently featured in the climactic gunfight of Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966). He actually lost it while building a playhouse for his daughter, although there were rumors that it happened in a road accident or a bar fight. One episode of his short-lived TV series, "The Master" (1984), was titled "The Good, The Bad and the Priceless". According to the book "Weird NJ" (Sceurman, Mark and Mark Moran, Barnes and Noble Books, 2004 ISBN 0-7607-3979-X) he was a descendant of the Morris County Van Cleefs who were infamous in the area for their strange living and "procreational" efforts. In fact, one trait that Lee had was that he had one green eye and one blue eye. According to the book, "this telltale characteristic was corrected in the movies with colored contact lenses". During one summer in the early 1950s he was a camp counselor in NYC for Marc Furstenberg. Was portrayed as a bounty hunter in the Lucky Luke comic book "The Bounty Hunter". Was on the short list of actors under consideration for arms dealer Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights (1987).