Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was an American actor, known to film audiences for his work in the horror genre, mostly portraying villains. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
Actor, writer, and gourmet, Vincent Price was born in St Louis, Missouri. He traveled through Europe, studied at Yale and became an actor. He made his screen debut in 1938, and after many minor roles, he began to perform in low budget horror movies such as House of Wax (1953), achieving his first major success with House of Usher (1960). Known for his distinctive, low pitched, creaky, atmospheric voice and his quizzical, mock serious facial expressions, he went on to star in a series of acclaimed Gothic horror movies, such as Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971).
He abandoned films in the mid-1970s, going on to present cooking programs for television - he wrote "A Treasury of Great Recipes" (1965) with his second wife, Mary Grant - but had two final roles in The Whales of August (1987) and Edward Scissorhands (1990). He also recorded many Gothic horror short stories for the spoken-word label Caedmon Records.
