Early Career
Coulouris's stage debut was in 1926 with Henry V at the Old Vic, and by 1929 he made his first Broadway appearance, followed by his first Hollywood film role in 1933.
A major impact on his life was Orson Welles, whom he met in 1936. He joined Welles' Mercury Theatre, and played Mark Antony in their opening modern dress production of Julius Caesar. "Even 'Friends, Romans, countrymen' sounds on his tongue as if it were a rabble-rousing harangue he is uttering for the first time," noted John Mason Brown in the New York Post. In Citizen Kane (1941), Coulouris played Walter Parks Thatcher, a financier similar to J.P. Morgan. George Coulouris won a National Board of Review 'Best Actor' award in 1941 for his performance in Citizen Kane. Orson Welles was the only other Citizen Kane actor to win the same award.
During the 1930s and 1940s he remained a regular figure on the stage and screen, starring in his own Broadway production of Richard III in 1943. His films in this period included For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Mr. Skeffington (1944) and Watch on the Rhine (1943), in which he repeated the role he originated in the Broadway play of the same name. He also gave a notable performance as Robert de Baudricourt, in the Technicolor spectacular, Joan of Arc (1948), starring Ingrid Bergman. While most of his performances are strong ones, usually as a heavy or villain, occasionally he could turn his serious characterisations into humorous ones. Thatcher in Citizen Kane is fussy and pompous at times. A better (if briefer) example was in Mr. Skeffington as Dr. Byles, planning to go on a well-deserved, long-delayed holiday only to find it delayed again by a selfish, impossible Fanny Skeffington (Bette Davis).
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