RUTGER HAUER
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…” began Roy Batty, the replicant whose rain-drenched soliloquy gave Blade Runner its emotional wallop. The Dutch actor who played him might well have said the same thing last month, when he died at home in the Netherlands after a rich life and a brief illness, aged 75. The child of actor parents who ran a drama school in Amsterdam, he left school at 16 to work as a deck hand in the merchant navy before returning to land to try his hand as a carpenter, electrician and soldier (he was discharged from the army).
Finally returning to the family trade, Hauer enrolled in an acting course and pursued his career seriously – a stint in touring theatre led to a role in a Paul Verhoeven-directed TV show, Floris (1969), which made his name among Dutch audiences. That partnership with Verhoeven took him through five movies with the director, and landed him the bad-guy role in Nighthawks, opposite Sylvester Stallone, in 1981. Blade Runner the following year put him on the international map and Hauer took the opportunities offered to him and ran with them.
A prolific actor, he was as charismatic and convincing flogging Guinness in his famous run of ads as he was as a psycho in The Hitcher (1986), a vampire in Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1992), a corporate snake in Batman Begins (2005), a grindhouse-style homeless man in Hobo With A Shotgun (2011) or a cowboy in the recent The Sisters Brothers (2018). In a career spanning five decades, he voiced videogames, appeared in a Kylie Minogue video, mixed TV and film, arthouse and tentpole, European and American – always approaching each project with absolute seriousness and a kindness to fellow performers.
Throughout he remained down to earth – and humble. “I don’t know what my appeal is,” he said. “I can see I’ve got blue eyes and don’t look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but I can’t understand the fuss.” That legacy of graft and gentlemanliness means that, though he’s gone, for audiences he won’t ever be lost like tears in the rain… JC