Flamboyant, husky character actor in the US from 1923, who acted with the New York Theatre Guild before entering films. Ubiquitous in Paramount productions of the late 1930s, he usually played eccentric Slavic types, though he had a rare leading role in "The Way of the Flesh" (1940). From the early 1950s Tamiroff appeared in many European productions, with memorably baroque performances in Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville" (1965) and three Orson Welles films. (He also played the title character of Welles' unfinished "Sancho Panza".)
