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.