Rutger Hauer

Hauer in Floris, 1969

Hauer had his first acting role at the age of 11, as Eurysakes in the play Ajax.[12] After graduating from the Academy for Theater and Dance, he became a stage actor with the Toneelgroep Noorder Compagnie.[2] Hauer made his screen debut in 1969 when Paul Verhoeven cast him in the lead role of the television series Floris, a Dutch medieval action drama.[14] The role made him famous in his native country,[15] and Hauer reprised his role for the 1975 German remake Floris von Rosemund.[16][17]

Hauer's career changed course when Verhoeven cast him in Turkish Delight (1973), which received an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film.[14][17][18] The film found box office favour abroad and at home, and Hauer looked to appear in more international films.[19] Within two years, Hauer made his English-language debut in the British film The Wilby Conspiracy (1975).[20][14] Set in South Africa, the film was an action-drama with a focus on apartheid. Hauer's supporting role, however, was barely noticed in Hollywood, and he returned to Dutch films for several years. During this period, he made Katie Tippel (1975) and worked again with Verhoeven on Soldier of Orange (1977), and Spetters (1980).[13][17] These two films paired Hauer with fellow Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé.[21] At the 1981 Netherlands Film Festival, Hauer received the Golden Calf for Best Actor for his overall body of work.[22]

Hauer made his American debut in the Sylvester Stallone film Nighthawks (1981) as a psychopathic and cold-blooded terrorist named Wulfgar.[14] With his sights set on a long-term career in Hollywood, Hauer worked with an accent coach in the early 1980s to develop a convincing American accent.[23] Unafraid of controversial roles,[2] he portrayed Albert Speer in the 1982 American Broadcasting Company production Inside the Third Reich.[24] The same year, Hauer appeared in arguably his most famous and acclaimed role as the eccentric and violent but sympathetic antihero Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction thriller Blade Runner, in which he delivered the famous tears in rain monologue.[25] Hauer wrote some of the speech himself, the night before shooting, "cutting away swathes of the original script before adding the speech’s poignant final line".[26] He went on to play the adventurer courting Theresa Russell in Eureka (1983),[27] investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in The Osterman Weekend (1983),[28] hardened mercenary Martin in Flesh & Blood (1985), and knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke (1985).[28]

He appeared in The Hitcher (1986), in which he played a mysterious hitchhiker tormenting a lone motorist and murdering anyone in his way.[13] He received the 1987 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the television film Escape from Sobibor.[29] At the height of Hauer's fame, he was set to be cast as RoboCop (1987), but Verhoeven, the film's director, considered his frame as too large to move comfortably in the character's suit.[30] Also in 1987, Hauer starred as Nick Randall in Wanted: Dead or Alive as the descendant of the character played by Steve McQueen in the television series of the same name.[28]

In 1988, he played a homeless man in Ermanno Olmi's The Legend of the Holy Drinker. This performance won Hauer the Best Actor award at the 1989 Seattle International Film Festival.[31] Hauer was chosen to portray a blind martial artist superhero in Phillip Noyce's action film Blind Fury (1989). He initially struggled with the implausibility of the character, but learned to "unfocus my eyes, to react to smells and sounds" after meeting with blind judo practitioner Lynn Manning during his research for the role.[32] Hauer returned to science fiction in 1989 with The Blood of Heroes, in which he played a gladiator in a post-apocalyptic world.[33]

By the 1990s, Hauer was well known for his humorous Guinness commercials[13] as well as his screen roles, which had increasingly involved low-budget films,[2] such as Split Second (1992); The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1994); Omega Doom (1996) and New World Disorder (1999). In 1992, he appeared in the horror-comedy film Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the main antagonist vampire Lothos.[28] He also appeared in the Kylie Minogue music video "On a Night Like This" (2000).[34] During this time, Hauer acted in several British, Canadian and American television productions, including Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight (1994) as Earhart's navigator Fred Noonan,[35] Fatherland (1994),[36] Hostile Waters (1997),[37] The Call of the Wild: Dog of the Yukon (1997), Merlin (1998),[38] The 10th Kingdom (2000),[39] Smallville (2003),[40] Alias (2003),[40] and Salem's Lot (2004).[41]

Hauer played an assassin in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2003), a villainous cardinal with influential power in Sin City (2005) and a devious corporate executive running Wayne Enterprises in Batman Begins (2005).[17] Also in 2005, he played the title role in Patrick Lussier's film Dracula III: Legacy. Seven years later, he portrayed the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing in Dario Argento's Dracula 3D.[42] Hauer hosted the British reality television documentary Shock Treatment in 2005, and featured in Goal II: Living the Dream (2007) as Real Madrid coach Rudi Van der Merwe. He also recorded voice-overs for the British advertising campaign for the Danish butter brand Lurpak.[43][44]

Hauer at the Odesa International Film Festival, 2010

In 2008, Hauer received the Golden Calf Culture Prize for his contributions to Dutch cinema.[22][45] The award recognised his work as an actor as well as his efforts to aid the development of young filmmakers and actors, through initiatives such as the Rutger Hauer Film Factory.[46] In 2009, his role in avant-garde filmmaker Cyrus Frisch's Dazzle received positive reviews; it was described in Dutch press as "the most relevant Dutch film of the year". The same year, Hauer starred in the title role of Barbarossa, an Italian film directed by Renzo Martinelli. In April 2010, he was cast in the live action adaptation of the short and fictitious Grindhouse trailer Hobo with a Shotgun (2011).[47] Hauer played Freddie Heineken in The Heineken Kidnapping (2011), for which he received the 2012 Rembrandt Award for Best Actor.[48] Also in 2011, Hauer appeared in the supernatural horror film The Rite as an undertaker named Istvan, the protagonist's father.[49]

From 2013 to 2014, Hauer featured as Niall Brigant in HBO's True Blood.[17] In 2015, he starred as Ravn in The Last Kingdom and as Kingsley in Galavant.[17] In 2016, he joined the film jury for ShortCutz Amsterdam, an annual film festival promoting short films in Amsterdam.[50][51] Hauer voiced the role of Daniel Lazarski in the 2017 video game Observer, set in post-apocalyptic Poland. Lazarski is a member of a special elite police unit that can hack into minds and interact with memories within.[52] Hauer also provided the voice of Xehanort in the 2019 video game Kingdom Hearts III, replacing the late Leonard Nimoy and was himself replaced by Christopher Lloyd following his death.[53]