Reggie Nalder (born Alfred Natzler; 4 September 1907 – 19 November 1991) was a prolific Austrian film and television character actor from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. His distinctive features—partially the result of disfiguring burns—together with a haunting style and demeanor led to his being called "The Face That Launched a Thousand Trips".
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Life and career
Born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, he was the son of actor and operetta singer Sigmund Natzler. He was a cousin of actresses and singers Grete Natzler and Hertha Natzler. As a young man he performed at second-rate Vienna theatres and from the 1930s in several cabarets in Paris. After World War II he worked for the German language service of the BBC.
Nalder is perhaps best remembered for his roles as an assassin in Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, the vampire Kurt Barlow in the 1979 television adaptation of the Stephen King novel Salem's Lot, and the Andorian ambassador Shras in the Star Trek episode "Journey to Babel".
Nalder appeared, at the request of star Frank Sinatra, in a brief, uncredited role as a communist spymaster named Dmitri in John Frankenheimer's 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate. He also had a brief role in the 1981 Walt Disney film The Devil and Max Devlin but later stated in an interview that he could not stand working with its star Bill Cosby, who he described as "a pig", as well as "rude, arrogant, and very untalented."
Nalder's television work also included episodes of the series 77 Sunset Strip, It Takes a Thief, Surfside Six, Boris Karloff's Thriller ("The Terror in Teakwood" and "The Return of Andrew Bentley"), McCloud and I Spy. Nalder was also credited as "Detlef Van Berg" in the X rated films Dracula Sucks (1978) and Blue Ice (1985), but performed in no scenes of a pornographic nature.
Death
Nalder died of bone cancer in Santa Monica, California in 1991, aged 84.
