7. Howard Vernon
Howard Vernon was a Swiss actor who began his career as a regular actor. He was in Jean Pierre Melville's 1945 film Le silence de la mer, in which he played a benign Nazi. This role brought him to prominence and he built up a solid career as a character actor in France. He worked with Fritz Land and Jean Luc Goddard, though his gruff looks led to him being typecast. Vernon was cast in Jess Franco's The Awful Dr Orlof, and this began a long career for Vernon in the services of Euro Cult cinema. Always interesting to watch, he enlivened Franco's films considerably and he must have starred in at least twenty films for Franco. These include: The Bloody Judge, She Killed in Ecstasy, A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Lorna the Exorcist, and The Perverse Countess. Obviously, Vernon must have had a soft spot for Franco as he juggled working with Franco whilst working for Woody Allen (Love and Death in 1975). Howard Vernon ended his career on a high note before he died in 1996. He had a role in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's art house classic, Delicatessen.