	He was the first actor to play Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot on screen in three British films during the early 1930s: "Alibi" (1931), "Black Coffee" (1931) and "Lord Edgware Dies" (1934). He subsequently turned up in a character part in a later Poirot adaptation "The Alphabet Murders" in 1965. He stated that he only got the Poirot role because he could speak with a French accent.