Hercule Poirot is one of those literary heroes, like James Bond or Sherlock Holmes, whose image blazes brightly in the popular imagination. From his debut in Agatha Christie’s 1920 novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” through his final appearance in “Curtain,” published in 1975, the Belgian detective cut a simple, distinctive figure: a “quaint, dandified little man,” as Christie wrote, “hardly more than 5 foot 4 inches,” with a head “exactly the shape of an egg,” a “pink-tipped nose” and, in what is probably the most famous instance of facial hair in the history of English literature, an enormous, “upward-curled mustache” — which Christie later boasted was no less than the finest one in England.
Christie wrote more than 80 novels and short stories about Poirot, and nearly all of them have been adapted for film and television. Many actors have stepped into the role over the years, each trying to give it his own spin, much as a stage actor might take a fresh crack at King Lear. Tony Randall, in Frank Tashlin’s 1965 mystery-comedy “The Alphabet Murders,” played it for laughs, exaggerating Poirot’s exotic pomposity with farcical zeal. By contrast, Alfred Molina, in a made-for-TV version of “Murder on the Orient Express” from 2001, brought a subtler, more muted touch, softening the character’s sometimes cartoonish extravagance. Hugh Laurie once even donned the iconic ’stache for a cameo in “Spice World,” letting Baby Spice (Emma Bunton) get away with murder.
