Yul Brynner

Brynner was born in Russia's far east and worked as a trapeze artist and cabaret singer in Paris before emigrating to the United States, where his breakout stage role in a hit Broadway musical made him an overnight star.

He wore his iconic King and I bald head and black gunslinger costume to play the Gunslinger android — an unstoppable, expressionless killing machine years before the Terminator existed. Already an Academy Award winner from his stage and screen performances in The King and I, he brought an unsettling stillness to the role.

His performance is now widely regarded as one of the earliest templates for the modern unstoppable-killer-robot archetype, frequently cited as a direct visual influence on the Terminator's own design.