Biography
German actor Peter Lee Lawrence, also known as Arthur Grant, is a mysterious figure in cinema. He enjoyed a brief run as one of the top actors in the "spaghetti Western" genre, but never transcended it as his colleague Clint Eastwood did. Lawrence, on the other hand, was dead before his 30th birthday, some say by his own hand, a thought which merely adds a layer of sadness to his enigmatic career. He rode into the movies in 1965 with an uncredited role in Sergio Leone's "For a Few Dollars More" and went on to appear in the '67 Westerns "Days of Violence," "Fury of Johnny Kid," and "The Man Who Killed Billy the Kid." The following year, he starred in the Westerns "Killer Adios" and "Pistol for a Hundred Coffins," as well as the WWII drama "Testa di sbarco per otto implacabili." Over the next five years, Lawrence's filmography would include "Garringo" and "Raise Your Hands, Dead Man, You're Under Arrest," and "Black Beauty," the latter family drama being his most notable non-Western movie. He married the actress Cristina Galbó, and later moved the Nice region in France. Mystery surrounds Lawrence's death in '74, with some reports indicating that he suffered a brain tumor, and others reporting that he committed suicide, possibly as a result of the brain-tumor diagnosis. His final film was the cowboy comedy "Los caballeros del Botón de Ancla."
