Max Shreck
Max Schreck almost certainly entered F.W. Murnau's orbit thanks to their mutual affiliation with the innovative German theatre director Max Reinhardt. Both were regulars of his ensemble at one point or another, where they learned a baroque approach to drama, an approach that pays off in Shreck's gripping performance in Nosferatu. Schreck disappears into the role, thanks in part to truly grotesque makeup. His performance in this film would inspire another film in 2000, Shadow of the Vampire, which posited that Schreck was hired for the role because he was an actual vampire. Much speculation has arisen about whether there was actually a man named Max Schreck or if this was just a canny pseudonym, as the word "schreck" is German for "monster."
Gustav von Wangenheim
Wangenheim was a regular on the German film scene, and worked with another master of the Weimar era, Fritz Lang. But Wangenheim's biography tends to prove a little more interesting than his filmography. He was a communist involved in producing communist theater in Germany until eventually booted from Germany by the Nazis. He fled to Soviet Russia where, after not too long, he publicly denounced two friends of his as Trotskyites, resulting in one of them getting executed and the other getting sent to a Gulag. Later, it became clear that Stalin believed those so-called Trotskyites plotted to assassinate him and ordered that Wangenheim was tortured until he complied with a plan to discredit them.
Greta Schröder
Greta Schröder appeared in the two great horror films of the German silent era: Nosferatu and The Golem, in which she played the little girl Rose. She mainly acted during the Weimar era, and was also a regular of Max Reinhardt's theatre productions.
Alexander Granach
As with so many involved in the Weimar film scene, Granach's career would be shaped by the rise of Nazi Germany. Before and after Nosferatu, Granach enjoyed a healthy career in German silent cinema, but fled the Nazi Republic, rightly fearing his fate as a Jew in the country. He eventually landed in the United States where he enjoyed a career in Hollywood. His last great role came as a concentration camp guard in Fritz Lang's American film Hangman Also Die!
John Gottowt
Gottowt was really only active during the Weimar period of German silent film. Most notably, he appeared in an earlier German vampire movie, Genuine. That film was directed by Robert Weine the same year the Weine made the German expressionist classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Gottowt would spend his later days on the run from the Nazis, until he was killed by the SS in Poland.
