Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz; June 3, 1925) is an American film actor. He has played a variety of roles, from light comic, such as the musician on the run from gangsters in Some Like It Hot, to serious dramatic roles, such as an escaped convict in The Defiant Ones, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Since 1949, he has appeared in more than 100 films and has made frequent television appearances.

Curtis was born as Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx, New York, a son of Emanuel Schwartz and his wife Helen Klein. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Mátészalka, Hungary. His father was a tailor and the family lived in the back of the shop, the parents in one corner and Curtis and his brothers Julius and Robert in another. Curtis has said, "When I was a child Mom beat me up and was very aggressive and antagonistic." His mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental illness which also affected his brother Robert and led to his institutionalization. When Curtis was eight, he and his younger brother Julius were placed in an orphanage for a month because their parents could not afford to feed them. Four years later, Julius was struck and killed by a truck.

During World War II, Curtis served in the United States Navy aboard USS Proteus (AS-19), a submarine tender. On September 2, 1945, he witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay from about a mile away. Following his discharge, Curtis studied acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator, along with Elaine Stritch, Walter Matthau, and Rod Steiger. He was discovered by a talent agent and casting director Joyce Selznick. Curtis claims it was because he "was the handsomest of the boys." Arriving in Hollywood in 1948 at age 23, he was placed under contract at Universal Pictures and changed his name to Tony Curtis, taking his first name from the novel Anthony Adverse and his last name from "Kurtz", a surname from his mother's family. Although the studio taught him fencing and riding, Curtis admits he was at first only interested in girls and money.