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Rutger Hauer

Rutger Hauer

Birthday: 1944-01-23 | Place of Birth: Breukelen, Utrecht, Netherlands

Rutger Oelsen Hauer (23 January 1944 - 19 July 2019) was a Dutch film actor. He was well known for his roles in Flesh + Blood, Blind Fury, Blade Runner, The Hitcher, Nighthawks, Sin City, Ladyhawke, The Blood of Heroes and Batman Begins. Hauer was born in Breukelen, Netherlands, to drama teachers Arend and Teunke, and grew up in Amsterdam. Since his parents were very occupied with their careers, he and his three sisters (one older, two younger) were raised mostly by nannies. At the age of 15, Hauer ran off to sea and spent a year scrubbing decks aboard a freighter. Returning home, he worked as an electrician and a carpenter for three years while attending acting classes at night school. He went on to join an experimental troupe, with which he remained for five years before he was cast in the lead role in the very successful 1969 television series Floris, a Dutch Ivanhoe-like medieval action drama. The role made him famous in his native country. Hauer's career changed course when director Paul Verhoeven cast him as the lead in Turkish Delight (1973) (based on the Jan Wolkers book of the same name). The movie found box-office favour abroad as well as at home, and within two years, its star was invited to make his English-language debut in the British film The Wilby Conspiracy (1975). Set in South Africa and starring Michael Caine and Sidney Poitier, the film was an action melodrama with a focus on apartheid. Hauer's supporting role, however, was barely noticed in Hollywood, and he returned to Dutch films for several years. Hauer made his American debut in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Nighthawks (1981), cast as a psychopathic and cold-blooded terrorist named "Wolfgar" (after a character in the Old English poem Beowulf). The following year, he appeared in arguably his most famous and acclaimed role as the eccentric, violent, yet sympathetic replicant Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi thriller, Blade Runner. Hauer was a dedicated environmentalist. He fought for the release of Greenpeace's co-founder, Paul Watson, who was convicted in 1994 for sinking a Norwegian whaling vessel. Hauer has also established an AIDS awareness foundation called the Rutger Hauer Starfish Foundation. He married his second wife, Ineke, in 1985 (they had been together since 1968); and he has one child, actress Aysha Hauer, who was born in 1966 and who made him a grandfather in 1988. In April 2007, he published his autobiography All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants, and Blade Runners (co-written with Patrick Quinlan) where he discussed many of his movie roles. Proceeds of the book go to Hauer's Starfish Foundation.

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Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

2019
Iron Mask

as    English Ambassador

2018
Samson

as    Manoah

2018
The Sonata

as    Richard Marlowe

2018
Corbin Nash

as    Stranger

2018
The Sisters Brothers

as    The Commodore

2017
Drawing Home

as    Carl Rungius

2017
24 Hours to Live

as    Frank

2017
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

as    President of the World State Federation

2016
Beyond Valkyrie: Dawn of the Fourth Reich

as    Oskar Halminski

2016
The Worlds of Philip K. Dick

as    Self - Actor

2015
Admiral

as    Maarten Tromp

2014
The Letters

as    Benjamin Praagh

2014
2047: Sights of Death

as    Colonel Asimov

2013
Dracula 3D

as    Abraham van Helsing

2013
The Future

as    Maciste

2013
Flight of the Storks

as    Sonderman

2013
Real Playing Game

as    Steve Batier

2012
Metal Hurlant Chronicles

as    Kerm

2011
Black Butterflies

as    Abraham Jonker

2011
The Heineken Kidnapping

as    Alfred Heineken

2011
The Rite

as    Istvan Kovak

2011
The 5th Execution

as    Khant

2011
Bride Flight

as    Old Frank

2011
The Mill and the Cross

as    Peter Bruegel

2011
The Reverend

as    The Withstander

2007
Dead Tone

as    Det. John Criton