(April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930), nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces."

Lon Chaney was born Leonidas Frank Chaney in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Frank H. Chaney and Emma Alice Kennedy. Both of Chaney's parents were deaf, and as a child of deaf adults Chaney became skilled in pantomime. He entered a stage career in 1902, and began traveling with popular Vaudeville and theater acts. In 1905, he met and married singer Cleva Creighton and in 1906, their first child and only son, Creighton Chaney (a.k.a. Lon Chaney Jr.) was born. The Chaneys continued touring, settling in California in 1910.

Between the years 1912 and 1917, Chaney worked under contract for Universal Studios doing bit or character parts. His outstanding skill with makeup gained him many parts in the highly competitive casting atmosphere. During this time, Chaney befriended the husband-wife director team of Joe De Grasse and Ida May Parke, who gave him substantial roles in their pictures, and further encouraged him to play macabre characters.

By 1917 Chaney was a prominent actor in the studio, but his salary did not reflect this status. When Chaney asked for a raise, studio executive William Sistrom replied, "you'll never be worth more than one hundred dollars a week."

After leaving the studio, Chaney struggled for the first year as a character actor. It was not until 1918 when playing a substantial role in William S. Hart's picture, Riddle Gawne, that Chaney's talents as a character actor were truly recognized by the industry.

In 1919, Chaney had a breakthrough performance as "The Frog" in George Loane Tucker's The Miracle Man. The film not only displayed Chaney's acting ability, but his talent as a master of makeup. Critical praise and a gross of over $2 million put Chaney on the map as America's foremost character actor.

Chaney is chiefly remembered as a pioneer in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and most notably The Phantom of the Opera. His ability to transform himself using self-invented makeup techniques earned him the nickname of "Man of a Thousand Faces". In an autobiographical 1925 article published in Movie magazine that gave a rare glimpse into his life, Chaney referred to his specialty as "extreme characterization".

He also exhibited this adaptability with makeup in more conventional crime and adventure films, such as The Penalty, where he played an amputatee gangster. He appeared in a total of ten films by director Tod Browning, often playing disguised and/or mutilated characters, including carnival knife thrower Alonzo the Armless in The Unknown (1927) with Joan Crawford. In 1927, Chaney co-starred with Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall and Polly Moran in the now lost Tod Browning directed horror classic London After Midnight, quite possibly the most famous lost film ever. His last film was a remake with sound of his silent classic The Unholy Three (1930), his only "talkie" and the only film in which he displayed his versatile voice. Chaney signed a sworn statement declaring that five of the key voices in the film (the ventriloquist, old woman, parrot, dummy and girl) were in fact his own.

Although Chaney created, in Quasimodo, the bell ringer of Notre Dame, and Erik, the "phantom" of the Paris Opera House, two of the most grotesquely deformed characters in film history, the portrayals sought to elicit a degree of sympathy and pathos among viewers not overwhelmingly terrified or repulsed by the monstrous disfigurements of the characters, who were merely victims of fate.

"I wanted to remind people that the lowest types of humanity may have within them the capacity for supreme self-sacrifice," Chaney wrote in Movie magazine. "The dwarfed, mis-shapen beggar of the streets may have the noblest ideals. Most of my roles since The Hunchback, such as The Phantom of the Opera, He Who Gets Slapped, The Unholy Three, etc., have carried the theme of self-sacrifice or renunciation. These are the stories which I wish to do."

Chaney's talents extended far beyond the horror genre, and stage makeup. He was also a highly skilled dancer, singer and comedian. In fact, many people who did not know Chaney were surprised by his rich baritone voice and his sharp comedic skills.

Chaney and his second wife Hazel led a discreet private life distant from the Hollywood social scene. Chaney did minimal promotional work for his films and MGM studios, purposefully fostering a mysterious image.

In the final five years of his film career (1925-1930), Chaney worked exclusively under contract to MGM, giving some of his most memorable performances. His portrayal of a tough-as-nails marine drill instructor in Tell it To the Marines (1926), one of his favorite films, earned him the affection of the US Marine Corps, who made him their first honorary member from the motion picture industry.

During the filming of Thunder in the winter of 1929, Chaney developed pneumonia. In late 1929 he was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer. Despite aggressive treatment, his condition gradually worsened, and seven weeks after the release of the remake of The Unholy Three, he died of a throat hemorrhage. His death was deeply mourned by his family, the film industry and by his fans. The US Marine Corps provided a chaplain and Honor Guard for his funeral. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California, next to the crypt of his father. His wife Hazel was also interred there upon her death in 1933. For unknown reasons, Chaney's crypt has remained unmarked.