14 Actors Who Became Absolute Legends With Just One Movie

5. Ron Lacey - Major Arnold Toht (Raiders Of The Lost Ark)

For most actors, typecasting is something you have to worry about after you become widely-known. Tom Baker didn't wander into playing Doctor Who having worn long scarves and eaten jelly babies for 20 years beforehand. But Ron Lacey's career is an exception to this rule, with his biggest role coming shortly after he considered giving up acting. For our fifth and final Indy entry, I give you one of the creepiest villains of the 1980s. Lacey made his name on stage in the early-1960s, turning in a memorable performance in the original run of Chips with Everything. He later made several noteworthy TV appearances, in Civilisation, The Avengers and Porridge. Steven Spielberg cast Lacey for his resemblance to classic Hollywood character actor Peter Lorre. The part had previously been offered to Roman Polanski, who refused to travel for legal reasons, and Klaus Kinski, who branded the part: "moronically sh***y". Toht is a skin-crawling and perverse character, whose grotesque physicality belies a sadistic nature and a cruel disregard for other's lives. He brings a really intimidating presence to all his scenes in Raiders, and his death is as graphic as anything Lucio Fulci was doing around the same time. In light of his subsequent problems, relating to intestinal surgery in his youth, he probably made the best of what he had to work with, but it's a shame that his success came so late in his career. What He Did Next: Lacey continued to play villains in films like Sahara and Red Sonja, alongside a memorable turn as the Bishop of Bath and Wells in Blackadder II. A heavy drinker and smoker, he died of liver failure in 1991 aged 55.