Conrad Veidt - biography

“An actor remembers his first piece of published praise.  It is written on his heart.”

“I think the motion picture industry is a stupid business and I despise acting the scenes in short snatches, one at a time.  I hate this film work.  I am disgusted with myself.  On the stage I could never play a part unless I felt it with all my heart and soul.”

“I was appalled at the amount of study necessary in order to qualify in medicine, and gradually my desire was blunted by a keener - and secret - wish to become an actor.”

“I was never a villain on the stage.  I always played strong, sympathetic types.  My first stage role with a speaking part, believe it or not, was as a priest.  It wasn’t until I began acting in films that the producers and directors saw me primarily as a bizarre villain.”

“It is precisely as though I were possessed by some other spirit when I enter on a new task of acting, as though something within me presses a switch and my own consciousness merges into some other, greater, more vital being.”

“What use is there for a biography of myself?  I’m just a movie actor.”

“I have no illusions about my art.  I am what the public made me and, consequently, I am not likely to forget my debt to them.”

“It is my greatest joy to live a really good part, even though it imposes great strain.  An artist is tired but proud when he has created a great work of art.  So it is with the actor who really lives a great role and is proud of the part he played.”

“After my mother died, I found, a little book of hers which recorded everything I had ever done, how I had done it, and how proud she was of her son Conrad.”

“My father died.  It is still a deep regret to me this day that in choosing acting as my career I was forced to hurt him.  He died too early to see I had done the right, the only thing.”

“I turned down the first script offered to me, and the second.  I lay on my back one day under an umbrella, in the garden, reading the third, and wondered why I had turned down the first.”

“For me, half the joy of achieving has been the struggle and the fight, the pitting myself against the world and all its competition - and winning.”

“In the middle of my third Hollywood picture The Magician, the earthquake hit Hollywood.  Not the real earthquake.  Just the talkies.”

“Nothing seems to come up to your expectations.  But nothing I had heard about Hollywood was enough.”

“My birth neither shook the German Empire nor caused much of an upheaval in the home.  It pleased mother, caused father a certain amount of pride and my elder brother the usual fraternal jealousy of a hitherto only son.”

“So now it is time to disassemble the parts of the jigsaw puzzle or to piece another one together, for I find that, having come to the end of my story, my life is just beginning.”

“Have you ever walked late at night through a forest when you are first in love?”

“Looking back across the years, so many pictures flash on the screen of my memory that just as I begin to see one clearly, another slides in, blotting out the first, itself to be pushed aside by the next and the next and the next.”

“There must have been something in my nature - I believe, with all my heart, that I have conquered it now - which prevented me from being perfectly happy or making a woman perfectly happy.”

“I can see now that I should have been strong enough to conquer myself.”

“I used to think then that I was Bohemian, but I know now that I am not.  I prefer order and precision to untidiness and looseness.”

“I wish, naturally to prevent the possibility that someone may write an accidental, superficial, incomplete and perhaps untrue picture of me.”

“No, I was not born with a monocle in my eye.”

Conrad Veidt has appeared in the following films:
Der Weg des Todes (1916)
Der Spion (1917)
Die Seeschlacht (1917)
Furcht (1917)
Wenn Tote sprechen (1917)
Das Rätsel von Bangalor (1918)
Opfer der Gesellschaft (1918)
Der nicht vom Weibe Geborene (1918)
Die Serenyi (1918)
Das Dreimäderlhaus (1918)
Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1918)
Jettchen Geberts Geschichte (1918)
Colomba (1918)
Es werde Licht! 4. Teil: Sündige Mütter (1918)
Dida Ibsens Geschichte (1918)
Henriette Jacoby (1918)
Opium (1919)
Nocturno der Liebe (1919)
Die Mexikanerin (1919)
Die Japanerin (1919)
Die Prostitution, 1. Teil – Das gelbe Haus (1919)
Die Reise um die Erde in 80 Tagen (1919)
Peer Gynt – 2. Teil: Peer Gynts Wanderjahre und Tod (1919)
Peer Gynt (1919)
Anders als die Andern (1919)
Die Okarina (1919)
Die Prostitution, 2. Teil – Die sich verkaufen (1919)
Prinz Kuckuck – Die Höllenfahrt eines Wollüstlings (1919)
Wahnsinn (1919)
Unheimliche Geschichten (1919)
Künstlerlaunen (1920)
Der Graf von Cagliostro (1920)
Nachtgestalten (1920)
Satanas (1920)
Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari (1920)
Der Reigen – Ein Werdegang (1920)
Patience (1920)
Die Nacht auf Goldenhall (1920)
Die Augen der Welt (1920)
Kurfürstendamm (1920)
Der Januskopf (1920)
Moriturus (1920)
Abend – Nacht – Morgen (1920)
Manolescus Memoiren (1920)
Weltbrand (1920)
Das Indische Grabmal: Der Tiger von Eschnapur (1921)
Menschen im Rausch (1921)
Das Geheimnis von Bombay (1921)
Der Gang in die Nacht (1921)
Liebestaumel (1921)
Die Liebschaften des Hektor Dalmore (1921)
Sehnsucht (1921)
Christian Wahnschaffe, 2. Teil – Die Flucht aus dem goldenen Kerker (1921)
Landstraße und Großstadt (1921)
Danton (1921)
Lady Hamilton (1921)
Das Indische Grabmal: Die Sendung des Yoghi (1921)
Der Leidensweg der Inge Krafft (1921)
Lucrezia Borgia (1922)
Glanz gegen Glück (1923)
Bride of Vengeance (1923)
Paganini (1923)
Wilhelm Tell (1923)
Carlos und Elisabeth (1924)
Orlacs Hände (1924)
Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (1924)
Nju – Eine unverstandene Frau (1924)
Liebe macht blind (1925)
Le Comte Kostia (1925)
Schicksal (1925)
Ingmarsarvet (1925)
Die Brüder Schellenberg (1926)
Dürfen wir schweigen? (1926)
Kreuzzug des Weibes (1926)
Der Student von Prag (1926)
Die Flucht in die Nacht (1926)
Der Geiger von Florenz (1926)
The Beloved Rogue (1927)
A Man’s Past (1927)
The Last Performance (1927)
Gesetze der Liebe (1927)
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Das Land ohne Frauen (1929)
Die Letzte Kompanie (1930)
Menschen im Käfig (1930)
The Congress Dances (1931)
Der Mann, der den Mord beging (1931)
Die Nacht der Entscheidung (1931)
Der Kongreß tanzt (1931)
Die Andere Seite (1931)
Rasputin, Dämon der Frauen (1932)
Der Schwarze Husar (1932)
Rome Express (1932)
The Wandering Jew (1933)
Ich und die Kaiserin (1933)
F.P.1 (1933)
I Was a Spy (1933)
Guillaume Tell (1934)
Bella Donna (1934)
Wilhelm Tell (1934)
Jew Süss (1934)
The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1935)
King of the Damned (1935)
Dark Journey (1937)
Under the Red Robe (1937)
Le Joueur d’échecs (1938)
Tempête sur l’Asie (1938)
A People Eternal (1939)
The Spy in Black (1939)
Contraband (1940)
Escape (1940)
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
A Woman’s Face (1941)
Whistling in the Dark (1941)
The Men in Her Life (1941)
All Through the Night (1941)
Nazi Agent (1942)
Casablanca (1942)
Above Suspicion (1943)


Conrad Veidt directed the following films:
Wahnsinn (1919)
Die Nacht auf Goldenhall (1920)