Anthony Higgins

Anthony Higgins was born on May 9, 1947, in Northampton, England, and began his professional acting career 22 years later. Early on, he had a penchant for rigor mortis and ghoulery, performing in such films as Walk With Love and Death (1969), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), and Vampire Circus (1972). Higgins climbed out of the crypt in 1981 when he played a German villain, Gobler, in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Higgins appears off and on throughout the film, but audiences may remember him best as the driver of the Nazi staff car attempting to block Indiana Jones from escaping in a careening truck carrying the Ark of the Covenant. The film made Higgins a household face, if not a household name, throughout the world. A year later, the world noticed that he could act, too -- in a serious, artistic way -- in The Draughtsman's Contract. Higgins then appeared in the hit British TV miniseries Reilly: The Ace of Spies in 1983 before accepting a variety of roles which, if nothing else, demonstrated his versatility. For example, he played Prince Abdullah in Lace (1984), the fencing master Rathe in Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), actor Laurence Olivier in Darlings of the Gods (1991), composer Johann Strauss in The Strauss Dynasty (1991), Sherlock Holmes in 1994 Baker Street: The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1993), King Henry II in Nostradamus (1994), Korah in Moses (1996), and Admiral Griggs in Deeply (2000).

~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide