Sydney Hughes Greenstreet (December 27, 1879 - January 18, 1954) was a British-born American character actor who found fame only in his sixties. After four decades on stage in England and the United States - where he mastered virtually the entire Shakespearean repertoire - director John Huston cast him in The Maltese Falcon (1941), and his very first film role earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Over the following eight years he made more than twenty films for Warner Bros., most often alongside Peter Lorre, and his portrayal of the scheming Ferrari in Casablanca (1942) remains one of the most memorable supporting turns of Hollywood's golden age.
