Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, CBE (21 July 1863 – 20 December 1948) was an English Test cricketer turned stage and film actor.
He briefly settled in South Africa in 1888-1889 to prospect for gold. He started acting on stage in 1895 and in films in 1915.
When he was well into his late 60s and his 70s, Hollywoodian productions would copiously typecast him in the "old stuffy British Officer and a Gentleman / old Gentleman Adventurer" niche. He was, for a while, the apotheosis of Stiff Upper Lip. (He also frequently wore a High-Class Glass.)
Selected filmography:
- Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) as James Parker
- The Barbarian (1933) as Cecil
- Queen Christina (1933) as Aage
- Secrets (1933) as William Marlowe
- Cleopatra (1934) as Enobarbus
- The Scarlet Empress (1934) as Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst
- The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) as Major Hamilton
- The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) as Colonel Zapt note
- Another Thin Man (1939) as Colonel Burr MacFay
- And Then There Were None (1945) as General Sir John Mandrake
