Born in Zgierz near Łódź, Sheybal entered the performing arts after World War II, first appearing on Polish stages and in Andrzej Wajda’s Kanał before political opposition forced him to leave for Vienna and then Britain in 1959, where he taught acting and directed productions such as Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina at Oxford. His British film breakthrough came as the scheming chess master Kronsteen in…
