Roy Giusti, later known as Roy D'Arcy, was born in San Francisco in 1894 but spent his formative years in Europe, where he was educated. He then embarked on a journey with a band of gypsies across the Continent, eventually settling in Paris to study art and painting. After several years of traveling and various business ventures in South America and Asia, D'Arcy returned to the United States and decided to pursue a career in the theater.
He began by working as a singer in several touring theatrical companies, eventually making his film debut in 1919 with a role he had previously performed on stage. D'Arcy spent some time in vaudeville as a monologist, taking his act to Europe and Asia before returning to the United States. It was during a performance on a Los Angeles stage that he was spotted by director Erich von Stroheim, who cast him as the villainous Prince Mirko in The Merry Widow (1925).
The film was a critical and commercial success, and D'Arcy received rave reviews for his portrayal of the cruel and dissolute Mirko. As a result, he was cast as the head villain in several other productions, including Graustark (1925),La Bohème (1926),and The Temptress (1926). He also appeared in comedies such as Adam and Evil (1927) and On Ze Boulevard (1927).
In 1928, D'Arcy developed a revue that he took to Broadway, featuring singers, dancers, and himself walking out into the audience to tell stories of his travels around the world. He easily transitioned from silent films to talkies, playing a succession of exotic foreigners, both villainous and otherwise.
However, as acting styles changed with the introduction of sound, D'Arcy's somewhat florid style went out of fashion, and he was eventually reduced to playing small roles in low-budget films for independent studios. He had a showier role in the serial The Shadow of the Eagle (1932),starring a young John Wayne, and in The Whispering Shadow (1933),alongside Bela Lugosi.
Over the next few years, D'Arcy played villainous roles in a number of low-budget productions, including Revolt of the Zombies (1936),Captain Calamity (1936),and Under Strange Flags (1937). His final film was the Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire musical The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939),after which he retired and started his own real estate business.
