Lee Van Cleef

Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef Jr. earned a Bronze Star aboard a Navy minesweeper in World War II, then drifted through regional theatre before landing a wordless outlaw bit in High Noon in 1952. His angular features locked him into villain roles across Westerns and noir through the fifties and early sixties, a career starting to fade after a serious car crash. Leone's For a Few Dollars More in 1965 gave him the co-lead, and suddenly the journeyman was a star. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly followed in 1966, then a decade-long run through European Westerns - The Big Gundown, Day of Anger, Sabata, Barquero - and later turns in Escape from New York and the short-lived martial-arts series The Master. He died in December 1989, having appeared in over 170 roles across nearly forty years, remembered mostly for the two Leone films that made the squint canonical.