George Alexander Coulouris (1 October 1903 – 25 April 1989) was an English film and stage actor. Early life Coulouris was born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, the son of Abigail (née Redfern) and Nicholas Coulouris, a merchant of Greek origin. He was brought up both in Manchester and nearby Urmston and was educated at Manchester Grammar School. He attended London's Central School of Speech and Drama, in the company of fellow students Laurence Olivier and Peggy Ashcroft. Early career Coulouris made his stage debut in 1926 with Henry V at the Old Vic. In 1928 and 1929 he appeared in several productions at the Cambridge Festival Theatre including Eugene O'Niell's The Hairy Ape.. By 1929, he made his first Broadway appearance, followed by his first Hollywood film role in 1933. A major impact on his life was Orson Welles, whom he met in 1936 when they both had roles in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Ten Million Ghosts. Welles invited Coulouris to become a charter member of his Mercury Theatre, and in 1937 Coulouris performed the role of Mark Antony in the company's debut production, Caesar, an innovative modern-dress production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. "Even 'Friends, Romans, countrymen' sounds on his tongue as if it were a rabble-rousing harangue he is uttering for the first time," noted John Mason Brown in the New York Post. In 1938, he appeared in the Mercury stage productions of The Shoemaker's Holiday and Heartbreak House, and became part of the repertory company that presented CBS Radio's The Mercury Theatre on the Air and its sponsored continuation, The Campbell Playhouse (1938–40). Also for CBS, in 1944 he starred in the radio series Suspense, in the episode "Portrait without a Face". In Citizen Kane (1941), Coulouris played Walter Parks Thatcher, a financier similar to J. P. Morgan. Coulouris and Welles each received a 1941 National Board of Review Award for their performances. During the 1930s and 1940s, Coulouris remained a regular figure on the stage and screen, starring in his own Broadway production of Richard III in 1943. His films in this period included For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Between Two Worlds (1944), Mr. Skeffington (1944) and Watch on the Rhine (1943), in which he repeated the role he originated in the Broadway production. He also performed as Robert de Baudricourt in Joan of Arc (1948), starring Ingrid Bergman. While most of his performances