John Steiner, British actor who became a star in Italy playing villains, sadists and Nazis – obituary

John Steiner, the actor, who has died aged 80, enjoyed a 20-year film career in Italy while remaining almost entirely unknown in his home country of Britain; tall, gaunt, and thin-lipped, he was often cast as sadists, SS officers, and other assorted swine who usually came to a richly deserved bad end, often by improbably grotesque means.

Although he occasionally appeared in films by such critically respected directors as Damiano Damiani, Marco Bellocchio and Lina Wertmüller, the vast majority of Steiner’s work was in low-budget but often wildly inventive fare directed by the likes of Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, and Antonio Margheriti, veteran Cinecittà professionals whose work would later achieve a devoted cult following outside Italy.

Of Swiss descent, John Steiner was born on January 7 1942 in Chester to Ernest Steiner and Joan, née Dutton. He developed an interest in acting while at school, and after attending Rada and joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 1960s, he appeared in Dennis Potter’s 1966 play Alice for the BBC, and in both the stage and film versions of Peter Brooks’s Marat/Sade (1967), in which he played Monsieur Dupere.

On a subsequent trip to Italy, he discovered that “The one place where Marat/Sade had been a really huge success was in Rome. So I went there and discovered that everyone knew who I was. I was instantly offered a whole lot of work, I felt very grand and snooty in those days and didn’t want to do a lot of it; then I decided I’d see what would happen and started it, and one thing led to another.”

Despite his misgivings, Steiner’s Italian sojourn got off to a fine start with Giulio Petroni’s Tepepa (1969), in which the actor’s icy demeanour as an English doctor seeking revenge during the Mexican Revolution contrasted well with the more flamboyant performances of Tomas Milian as the titular insurrectionist and Orson Welles as a vicious army colonel.

Less effective, but more widely seen, was Steiner’s first role as a Nazi officer, in Massacre in Rome (1973), starring Richard Burton and Marcello Mastroianni in a drama about the slaughter of 335 civilians at the Fosse Ardeatine in 1944.

He then played the villain in two films loosely derived from Jack London’s White Fang, both directed by Lucio Fulcio, for whom Steiner later appeared as a gay vampire in Dracula in the Provinces (1975). That same year, Steiner was offered the equivalent of $10,000 to play a deranged criminal in Roma violenta, but was so appalled by the script he made a demand for twice that amount, confident it would be rejected. Much to his surprise, the producers agreed – and the film proved an enormous domestic success, raising Steiner’s profile in his adopted country to new heights.

In 1976, Steiner was back in Nazi uniform for Tinto Brass’s lavish and overblown Salon Kitty and the low-budget Deported Women of the SS Special Section, in which a female inmate, correctly anticipating camp commandant Steiner’s intentions, implants a device containing razor blades about her person, leading to his emasculation prior to being shot to death by his own aide. Unsurprisingly, the film was denied a certificate by the British Board of Film Censors.

A rare sympathetic role followed in 1977, in Mario Bava’s Shock, in which he played the husband of a woman who believes her child is possessed. Steiner later remarked: “The great thing about Mario Bava... he just had fabulous technique. His effects were amazingly simple, usually done with lighting effects or clever cutting... It’s my favourite of those kinds of movies. Some people like Tenebrae [directed by Dario Argento in 1982 and prosecuted in Britain as a “video nasty”], but I much prefer the one I did with Bava.”

Steiner continued his collaboration with Tinto Brass in the notorious Caligula (1979), in which he played Longinus, the emperor’s sinister, shaven-headed treasurer. Steiner found the whole experience “hideous” – a verdict equally applicable to the film itself. His work in the 1980s included six films – principally thick-ear action-adventure yarns – for Antonio Margheriti, and a role in the comedy Troppo forte (1986), from a story and script by Sergio Leone.

By then, the Italian film industry was in steep decline, leading Steiner to consider his future: “It was in 1986 that I said to myself, ‘I can’t make the living that I used to.’ Plus, I think I’d got to an age where I wasn’t really interested in being an actor any more. I think that just naturally happens.”

His last film, his fourth for Tinto Brass, was Paprika (1991), a version of John Cleland’s Fanny Hill transposed to 1950s Italy.

Steiner returned to London and started a carpentry business, before removing a few years later to Los Angeles, where he became a successful real estate agent. Commenting on his film career, he said: “I am personally thrilled – it’s very flattering – absolutely amazed at the depth of the cult following that these movies have... There’s this enormous culture of Italian B-movies, and I’m absolutely bowled over by it.”

John Steiner married Maria Caruffo in 1969; she survives him.

John Steiner, born January 7 1942, died July 31 2022