Born in London, England Claude Rains, son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains, began his stage career at age 11, acting as a $2-a-week page boy in a London theater. He later became the first British actor to be paid more than $1 million for a single role, in the 1945 Caesar and Cleopatra. His first American film was The Invisible Man, and among his most famous were Casablanca, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Phantom of the Opera and Notorious.
Claude Rains died of an intestinal hemorrhage in hospital at age 77.
