​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sokoloff (Russian: Владимир Александрович Соколов; December 26, 1889 – February 15, 1962) was a character actor on stage and particularly in film. Sokoloff was born in Moscow, Russia. He became an actor and assistant director with the Moscow Art Theatre before emigrating to Berlin in 1923. With the rise of Nazism, Sokoloff who was Jewish, moved first to Paris in 1932, then to the United States in 1937. He appeared in a number of ...