Sydney Greenstreet's father was a leather merchant with eight children. Sydney left home at age 18 to make his fortune as a Ceylon tea planter, but drought forced him out of business and back to England. He managed a brewery and, to escape boredom, took acting lessons. His stage debut was as a murderer in a 1902 production of "Sherlock Holmes". From then on he appeared in numerous plays in England and the US, working through most of the 1930s with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne at the Theatre Guild. His parts ranged from musical comedy to Shakespeare. His film debut, occurring when he was 62 years old and weighing nearly 300 pounds, was as Kasper Guttman in the classic The Maltese Falcon, with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre. He teamed with Lorre in eight more movies after that. In eight years he made 24 films, all while beset by diabetes and Bright's disease. In 1949 he retired from films, and died four years later. He was 75.


Casablanca (1942): $4,000/week

Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, USA, in the Utility Columbarium area of the Great Mausoleum (not accessible for public viewing). Son, John Ogden Greenstreet died March 4, 2004 at age 84. Author Tennessee Williams wrote his one-act play "The Last of My Solid Gold Watches" with Sydney Greenstreet in mind, and dedicated it to him. His little-known Cyrus Redblock role was recycled into another same-name character for the series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987), episode "The Big Good-Bye". Played fittingly by the late Lawrence Tierney.