Clarence Leroy Van Cleef Jr.  was an American actor whose sinister features overshadowed his acting skills and typecast him as a minor villain for a decade before he achieved stardom in Spaghetti Westerns such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Hatchet-faced with piercing eyes, he declined to have his hook nose altered to play a sympathetic character in his film debut, High Noon, and was relegated to a non-speaking outlaw as a result. After suffering serious injuries in a car crash, Van Cleef began to lose interest in his apparently waning career by the time Sergio Leone gave him a major role in For a Few Dollars More. The film made him a box-office draw, especially in Europe.

李·范·克里夫（Lee Van Cleef美國演技派著名演員、影星，IMDb盛讚李是「One of the great movie villains」（最偉大之反派影星），影藝演出38年共演出91部電影及109部電視劇是多產影星，生於新澤西州薩默維爾，於數部經典西部片代表作裡擔綱演出，多飾演冷酷少言、功夫極好、黑衣黑褲黑帽之反派盜匪頭子1952年演出第一部電影「邊城蒙面俠」（Kansas City Confidential），成名作為：日正當中／龍城殲霸戰 High Noon（1952年），也襯托演出幫助賈利·古柏奪得第二座奧斯卡金像獎最佳男主角；李代表作是1965年起三年之「鏢客三部曲」，也捧紅當時仍無甚知名度的克林·伊斯威特；1989年12月在加州牛津郡病逝，墓誌銘上刻寫「Lee Van Cleef Jan 9, 1925 - Dec 16, 1989 'Best of the Bad' Love and Light」。