Rutger Hauer

• 1. Introduction

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  Rutger Hauer died on the 19th of July 2019, at age 75, from pancreatic cancer, at his home in the Netherlands. He left behind a career of more than 170 roles across nearly 50 years. But the numbers alone don't capture what made him singular. In 1999, the Dutch public named him the Best Dutch Actor of the Century. The film they named the Best Dutch Film of the Century was Turkish Delight, made in 1973, and he starred in that one too.

  Born on the 23rd of January 1944 in Breukelen, in the Province of Utrecht, Hauer came into the world while German forces occupied the Netherlands. That fact stayed with him. In a 1981 interview he said, 'I was born in the middle of the war, and I think for that reason I have deep roots in pacifism. Violence frightens me.' And yet he would spend decades playing terrorists, hitchers, vampires, and replicants.

  How does a boy from occupied Utrecht become the face of one of cinema's most haunting final speeches? How did a colourblind merchant sailor become one of the most distinctive presences in Hollywood? And why, at the height of his fame, did he walk away from the blockbusters and choose a different path entirely?

• 2. Roots and Restlessness

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  Both of Rutger Hauer's parents were actors who ran an acting school in Amsterdam. He attended a Rudolf Steiner school because his parents wanted him to develop his creativity. But creativity alone could not hold him. At the age of 15, he left school and joined the Dutch merchant navy, spending a year travelling the world aboard a freighter.

  His ambition was to become a ship's captain, but colourblindness ended that plan. Returning home, he worked in odd jobs while earning his high school diploma at night. He then enrolled at the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam, only to drop out again, this time to join the Royal Netherlands Army. He trained as a combat medic. He then left the service after a few months, because he opposed the use of deadly weapons.

  Hauer described his parents as more interested in their art than in their children. He did not have a close relationship with his father. The man who eventually filled that role was writer Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, whom Hauer met during the filming of Soldier of Orange. Hauer graduated from acting school in 1967, and his first screen role came just two years later. But his very first acting appearance had come much earlier, at age 11, when he played Eurysakes in a stage production of Ajax.

• 3. Paul Verhoeven and Dutch Stardom

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  Paul Verhoeven cast Hauer in the lead role of the Dutch television series Floris in 1969, a medieval action drama that made Hauer famous in his home country. The role was substantial enough that when a German remake, Floris von Rosemund, was produced in 1975, Hauer reprised it.

  Verhoeven then cast him in Turkish Delight in 1973, a film that earned an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film and found audiences at home and abroad. Within two years, Hauer made his English-language debut in the British film The Wilby Conspiracy in 1975, an action-drama set in South Africa with a focus on apartheid. Hollywood barely noticed his supporting role, and he returned to Dutch films.

  The partnership with Verhoeven continued through Katie Tippel in 1975, Soldier of Orange in 1977, and Spetters in 1980. Both Soldier of Orange and Spetters paired Hauer with fellow Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé. At the 1981 Netherlands Film Festival, Hauer received the Golden Calf for Best Actor, awarded for his overall body of work. His first attempt to cross over to international cinema had stalled, but Soldier of Orange had gained him recognition beyond Dutch borders, and a second window was about to open.

• 4. Roy Batty and the Hollywood Years

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  Hauer made his American debut playing Wulfgar, a psychopathic terrorist, opposite Sylvester Stallone in Nighthawks in 1981. He was serious about building a Hollywood career: in the early 1980s he worked with an accent coach to develop a convincing American accent.

  Also in 1982, he portrayed Albert Speer, the German architect and Nazi minister, in the American Broadcasting Company production Inside the Third Reich. Then came Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction thriller, in which Hauer played Roy Batty, a self-aware replicant described as an eccentric and violent but sympathetic antihero. The role produced the tears in rain monologue, one of the most quoted passages in cinema. Hauer composed parts of that monologue himself the evening before filming, cutting down the original script and adding the final poignant line.

  The roles that followed were diverse. He played an investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in The Osterman Weekend in 1983, a knight alongside Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke in 1985, and the hardened mercenary Martin in Flesh and Blood that same year. In The Hitcher in 1986, he played the titular mysterious hitchhiker who murders anyone crossing his path. He received the 1987 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the television film Escape from Sobibor.

  At the peak of that run, he was close to being cast as RoboCop in 1987, but Verhoeven, directing that film, decided Hauer's frame was too large to move comfortably inside the character's suit. Instead, that year he starred as Nick Randall in Wanted: Dead or Alive, playing the descendant of the character Steve McQueen had originated in the television series of the same name.

• 5. Preparation and Craft

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  Hauer's preparation for physically demanding or unfamiliar roles was deliberate and specific. For Blind Fury in 1989, a Phillip Noyce action film in which he played a blind martial artist superhero, he initially struggled with the implausibility of the character. His research led him to Lynn Manning, a blind judo practitioner. After their meetings, Hauer said he learned to 'unfocus my eyes, to react to smells and sounds.'

  In The Legend of the Holy Drinker in 1988, directed by Ermanno Olmi, he played a homeless man. The performance won him the Best Actor award at the 1989 Seattle International Film Festival. In 1987 he starred in Barbarossa, an Italian film directed by Renzo Martinelli. In 2009, his role in avant-garde filmmaker Cyrus Frisch's Dazzle drew praise; the Dutch press described it as 'the most relevant Dutch film of the year.'

  That range, from blind swordsman to homeless drifter to avant-garde project, points to something consistent in Hauer's choices: a willingness to take on roles that required him to inhabit a condition or a world he had never lived in, and to build his way toward it from the outside in. His preparation for the blind martial artist led him to a judo practitioner; the resulting performance became one of his most kinetically distinctive.

• 6. Later Career and Return to Dutch Cinema

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  By the 1990s, Hauer had become recognizable to audiences who had never seen Blade Runner, largely through his Guinness commercials. His screen work through the decade moved into lower-budget territory, including Split Second in 1992, The Beans of Egypt, Maine in 1994, Omega Doom in 1996, and New World Disorder in 1999. In 1992, he appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the main antagonist vampire Lothos. He also appeared in the Kylie Minogue music video 'On a Night Like This' in 2000.

  Television kept him busy across multiple countries. He played Fred Noonan, Amelia Earhart's navigator, in the 1994 production Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight. Other television credits included Merlin in 1998, The 10th Kingdom in 2000, Smallville and Alias in 2003, and Salem's Lot in 2004.

  From 2013 to 2014, Hauer played Niall Brigant in HBO's True Blood. In 2015 he appeared in The Last Kingdom and in Galavant. In 2017 he voiced Daniel Lazarski, a mind-hacking police detective, in the video game Observer. In 2019, he provided the voice of Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts III, replacing the late Leonard Nimoy; after Hauer's own death, Christopher Lloyd took over the role.

  His most celebrated late-career performance came with The Heineken Kidnapping in 2011, in which he played Freddie Heineken. The role earned him the 2012 Rembrandt Award for Best Actor. In 2008, he had already received the Golden Calf Culture Prize for his contributions to Dutch cinema, an award that recognized not only his acting but his efforts on behalf of young filmmakers and actors.

• 7. Activism and Private Life

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  Hauer married twice. His second wife, Ineke ten Cate, was someone he had been in a relationship with since 1968; they married in a private ceremony on the 22nd of November 1985. He had one child from his first marriage, to Heidi Merz.

  Although he was born in Utrecht, Hauer maintained a strong personal connection to Friesland. He told the Algemeen Dagblad that he 'needed to feel the Frisian clay under his feet.' Beyond film, he devoted sustained attention to two causes. He was a member of the board of advisors of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, reflecting his commitment to environmentalism. He also founded the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association, an organization dedicated to AIDS awareness.

  In April 2007, he published his autobiography, All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants, and Blade Runners, co-written with Patrick Quinlan. In 2013, the Dutch government recognised his public contributions by making him a knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. In 2016, he joined the film jury for ShortCutz Amsterdam, an annual festival promoting short films, a role consistent with his documented support for emerging filmmakers.