Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (Hungarian: ; 20 October 1882 – 16 August 1956), better known as Bela Lugosi (/ləˈɡoʊsi/; Hungarian: ), was a Hungarian-American actor famous for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 film and for his roles in various other horror films.
He had been playing small parts on the stage in his native Hungary before making his first film in 1917, but had to leave the country after the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919. He had roles in several films in Weimar Germany before arriving in the United States as a seaman on a merchant ship.
In 1927, he appeared as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. He later appeared in the classic 1931 film Dracula by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in popular horror films, with their East European setting, but his Hungarian accent limited his repertoire, and he tried unsuccessfully to avoid typecasting.