1. Bruno Ganz

Ganz starred in the 2004 film Downfall which showed Hitler’s last ten days. His portrayal of an exhausted, mentally-ill, shell of a man brought Ganz international critical acclaim but caused controversy in Germany where many worried that the film was “humanising” a monster.

2. Robert Carlyle

Having found worldwide fame by playing a psychopath with a moustache, Carlyle branched out from Franco Begbie in Trainspotting and took the title role in the 2003 CBS mini-series, Hitler: The Rise of Evil.

3. Noah Taylor

In Max (2002), Taylor played a young art student called Adolf Hitler who is befriended by John Cusack’s fictional Jewish art dealer, Max Rothman. Playing the future Fuhrer as an angst-ridden outsider, frustrated by his lack of talent, brought accusations that the film was treating Hitler too sympathetically but also examined the question: what if his life could have taken another route?

4. Ian McKellen

Long before he donned a pointy hat and beard everyone’s favourite Knight, and Dame, played Hitler in the 1989 British TV movie, Countdown to War. McKellen would return to fascist iconography for his 1995 film version of Richard III.

5. Michael Sheard

Although not exactly a household name, Sheard was the go-to man for Hitler cameos on TV and film from the first time he donned the moustache in Rogue Male (1976). His most memorable outing as the Nazi leader is probably the uncredited appearance in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where he mistakes an undercover Indy as a fan and gives him an autograph. However, for a generation that grew up in the late eighties he will always be more recognisable as the fearsome Mr Bronson in Grange Hill.

6. Anthony Hopkins

Although he will forever be associated with another charismatic madman, Dr Hannibal Lector, Hopkins also portrayed Hitler in The Bunker (1981). Like Downfall, this depicted the end of Hitler’s reign of terror but Hopkins performance was unusually underwhelming.

7. Steven Berkoff

The showboating thespian, director and writer, who enjoys a profitable day job playing baddies in action films like Beverly Hills Cop and Rambo II, was Hitler in the award winning 1988 mini-series, War and Remembrance. He later claimed that the false moustache was pivotal to his performance.

8. Charlie Chaplin

All right - the character wasn’t actually called Hitler. But Chaplin’s portrayal of “Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomania”, and his double, a poor Jewish barber, in The Great Dictator (1940) was an obvious exploitation of the physical similarity between his own on-screen tramp persona and the great dictator himself. In one of the last major films of his career, Chaplin provided cinema with one of its most powerful satirical images.

9. Ken Stott

Stott found time, between starring in gritty TV crime dramas, to appear as Hitler in Uncle Adolf (2005), a gritty TV historical drama about the Fuhrer’s unhealthy obsession with his niece, Geli Raubal. Edinburgh-born Stott played the part with his native Scottish accent, a move that prompted Times critic AA Gill to say that he sounded “rather like Gordon Brown”.

10. Bobby Watson

American comedy actor Bobby Watson, who started his career as a travelling Vaudeville performer, portrayed Hitler on film more than any other actor. He put in no less than 10 appearances, starting with The Devil With Hitler (1942) and ending with The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (1962), his last role, three years before his death. He also played a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz.

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