Herbert Lom, Film Villain With Long Career, Dies at 94  By
Robert Simonson 28 Sep 2012  Herbert Lom, a prolific and
versatile film actor who became best known for playing the
frustrated boss of Peter Seller's bumbling Inspector Clouseau in
the "Pink Panther" film series, died Sept. 27 at his home in
London. He was 94.  Born Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze
Schluderpacheru in 1917 in Prague, he emigrated to London in
1939, fleeing Nazi rule in his homeland. Already an actor by
trade (he made a single film in Czechoslovakia), he began
performing at the Old Vic and other English theatre companies.
(He changed his long surname to Lom because it was the shortest
he found in a local phone book.) Securing a seven-picture deal,
he moved to Hollywood in the 1940s. His English-language film
career began auspiciously. He played a psychiatrist in the hit
1947 James Mason vehicle "The Seventh Veil" (he had studied
Freud and Jung as a young man) and was an empathetic London
gangland kingpin in Jules Dassin's 1950 film