Vladek Sheybal

Life and career

Sheybal was born in Zgierz, near Łódź, in the Second Polish Republic. He appeared in the film Kanał (1957, credited as Władysław Sheybal), directed by Andrzej Wajda, before emigrating to the United Kingdom, where he was typically cast in villainous roles. He also appeared as Holocaust survivor Egon Sobotnik in the television mini-series QB VII.

He had a dual role as "the Director" and as Pierre Louys in Ken Russell's The Debussy Film, one of Russell's composer biopics for the BBC. Other Russell films in which he appeared were Billion Dollar Brain, Women in Love, and The Boy Friend.

Other films include Casino Royale, Doppelgänger, The Last Valley, Puppet on a Chain, Innocent Bystanders, The Wind and the Lion, The Lady Vanishes, Fire and Sword and Red Dawn.

Sheybal's other TV credits include Z-Cars, Danger Man, The Troubleshooters, The Saint, The Baron, The Champions, Callan, Strange Report, UFO (in which he had a recurring role as Dr Jackson), The New Avengers, Supernatural, Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy, Shōgun (miniseries) (as Captain Ferreira of the Black Ship), and Smiley's People.

In 1977, Sheybal won the Dracula Society's prestigious Hamilton Deane Award for his performance in the BBC play Night of the Marionettes, in which he played a sinister Austrian innkeeper whose life-size puppets supposedly inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Sheybal's final stage appearance was as Friedrich Nietzsche in the Pierre Bourgeade play The Eagle and the Serpent at London's Offstage Downstairs Theatre in 1988.

He died in London in 1992, aged 69, from a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery.