Béla Lugosi was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó on October 20,1882 in Lugos, Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania). The youngest of four children, Bela had dreams of an acting career from a very young age.

In 1910, he played the role of Romeo in Szeged, Hungary. He was later in a number of plays in Hungary, including some in two major theaters in Budapest. Under the pseudonym Arisztid Olt, Lugosi began his film career in 1917. He was in in a number of Hungarian and German films.

Lugosi arrived in America in 1921, where he played various roles on stage and in film. He first American film was 1923's The Silent Command.

In 1927 he played the lead in the two-year-long Broadway adaptation of Dracula. In 1931 he appeared in his most famous role, Todd Browning's screen version of Dracula. His long black cape and heavy Hungarian accent would from then on personify the Dracula image.

In 1932, he appeared in White Zombie, another of his more popular films. He plays a dark and evil zombie-maker in this low-budget horror classic. A year later, he played a manimal in Island of Lost Souls, and adaptation of H.G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau.

In 1934, he shared the screen with another horror great, Boris Karloff in a screen adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat. The next year he played a mad scientist in another Poe-inspired film, The Raven.

1941 marked the first time he teamed up in a movie with Lon Chaney, Jr., in The Wolf Man. Another film that Lugosi costarred with Chaney, Jr. was 1943's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Lugosi plays the monster. Unfortunately, a monster with a Hungarian accent didn't go over very well with the audience. All of Lugosi's dialogue was cut, causing quite of bit of confusion in the story line.

In 1948's comedy classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Lugosi returns to his Dracula role, Chaney portrays the Wolf Man, and Glenn Strange plays the Monster. This was the last film to feature the classic Universal Monsters.

In the fifties, Lugosi met up with Edward D. Wood, Jr., the infamous "Worst Director of All Time." He agreed to play a mad doctor in Wood's Glen or Glenda. In this film about transvesticism, Lugosi plays a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. In 1955, he appeared in Bride of the Monster. The same year he committed himself to the California State Hospital trying to kick his morphine habit.

Lugosi was in his seventies, and Hollywood didn't want anything to do with him. Ed Wood was beginning a new film, Plan Nine From Outer Space. Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956 in Los Angeles, California, shortly after filming of the movie began. He was buried in his Dracula cape, because he wanted to be remembered for his most famous role. Wood used what little footage he had already filmed. Lugosi was a zombiefied old man, whose also-zombiefied wife was played by Vampira. Wood's wife's chiropractor covered half his face to double for Lugosi in the remaining scenes.