Alfred Müller

Alfred Müller was a German stage and screen actor. His career peaked in the German Democratic Republic during the 1960s and 1970s, but he was still making frequent appearances – increasingly, by this time, on the small screen – in film dramas through the 1980s. He was 63 when the wall came down and, unlike many performers who had built their careers in East Germany (1949–1989), he successfully transitioned in reunified Germany, continuing to appear in stage musicals and television dramas long after his seventieth birthday. As a result of his starring role in the 1963 East German espionage film For Eyes Only he was burdened, over many decades, with the labels, the "James Bond of the East" and "007 of the East": he detested the epithets.