Actor Matt Berry referenced Basil Rathbone during the 2026 Academy Awards broadcast, briefly reviving the memory of one of Hollywood’s most elegant villains.

Classic film fans rejoiced across social media last night when Matt Berry unexpectedly invoked the name of Basil Rathbone during the Academy Awards broadcast. It made perfect sense: Berry’s ancient vampire Laszlo on What We Do in the Shadows is a connoisseur of everything that’s cool across the centuries—and in Old Hollywood there was nobody cooler than the dark-eyed, beautifully spoken and impeccably precise Basil Rathbone.

Rathbone has some Oscar connections, too. In Hollywood’s greatest year, 1939, he was the first performer to take the stage at the Awards ceremony, at the time a low-key affair that followed a banquet at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Rathbone entered first because he was at the height of his Hollywood career and fame that night, not to mention being a second-time Best Supporting Actor nominee.

Rathbone’s Oscar Nominations

Over the previous four years, Basil had made his name as suave villains in period dramas, thrillers, literary adaptations and swashbucklers. His gallery of arrogant aristocrats, sexy pirates, and literal lady-killers was unrivaled. Then Rathbone made a radical departure, playing the crafty and cheerfully amoral King Louis XI in If I Were King. Hunched over and tetchy, with an old man’s lank gray hair hanging down to his shoulders, Basil was almost unrecognizable. And, with witty dialogue by Preston Sturges, unexpectedly funny. He was widely expected to win the Oscar, and his loss was considered an upset at the time.

Rathbone had previously been nominated for playing Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet—the first actor nominated for playing Shakespeare, followed eventually by Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando. Rathbone deserved to win for both his nominated performances, but he never did take home the gold (I explain the political realities behind the vote in my forthcoming Rathbone biography). The actor would have to wait another ten years for awards recognition, returning to Broadway as the cruel father in The Heiress and winning a Tony as best actor.

If Basil was disappointed at losing the Academy Award that evening in February 1939, he never mentioned it. He was Hollywood’s highest-paid freelance actor, with a big hit in release, Son of Frankenstein, which brought him even more fans for his protean performance. Then a few weeks after the ceremony, Rathbone began shooting The Hound of the Baskervilles, playing a character new to him: Sherlock Holmes. He would define this role, and vice versa, for the following half century and beyond.

Don’t you know Basil Rathbone died almost sixty years ago? host Conan O’Brien asked Berry last night. A mildly funny line, but not quite correct. Rathbone’s films and his iconic roles brought him something every performer at last night’s Oscars might envy, something even a vampire like Laszlo might covet—immortality.