Rutger Hauer - Film Career

Film Career

Hauer's career changed course when 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. During this period, he made Katie Tippel (1975) and worked again with Verhoeven on Soldier of Orange (1977), and Spetters (1980). These two films paired Hauer with fellow Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé.

Hauer made his American debut in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Nighthawks (1981), cast as a psychopathic and cold-blooded terrorist named "Wulfgar" (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 anti-hero replicant Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction thriller, Blade Runner — in which role Hauer improvised the oft-quoted tears in rain soliloquy.

Hauer went on to play the adventurer courting Gene Hackman's daughter (Theresa Russell) in Nicolas Roeg's poorly received Eureka (1983); the investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983); the hardened Landsknecht mercenary Martin in Flesh & Blood (1985); and the knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in the Medieval romance Ladyhawke (1985).

He continued to make an impression on audiences in The Hitcher (1986), in which he was the mysterious Hitchhiker intent on murdering C. Thomas Howell's lone motorist and anyone else who crossed his path. At the height of Hauer's fame, he was even set to be cast as RoboCop in the film directed by old friend Verhoeven, although the role ultimately went to American everyman method actor Peter Weller. That same year, however, 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.

Italian director Ermanno Olmi mined the gentler, more mystic and soulful side of Hauer's personality in The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1989), the story of a lost soul who dies of drink in Paris while attempting to pay a debt of honour in a church. Phillip Noyce also attempted to capitalize, with far less success, on Hauer's spiritual qualities in the martial arts action adventure Blind Fury (1989). Hauer returned to science fiction opposite Joan Chen with Salute of the Jugger (1990), in which he played a former champion in a post-apocalyptic world. He and Chen would work together again in two more science fiction films, Wedlock and Precious Find.

By the 1990s, Hauer was as well known for his humorous appearances in Guinness commercials as for his screen roles, which had increasingly involved low-budget films, including Split Second, which was set in a flooded London after global warming; Omega Doom, another post-apocalyptic story in which he plays a soldier-robot; and New World Disorder, opposite Tara FitzGerald. He also appeared in the Kylie Minogue music video On a Night Like This. In the late 1980s and 1990s, as well as in 2000, Hauer acted in several British and American television productions, including Inside the Third Reich (as Albert Speer); Escape from Sobibor (for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor); Fatherland; Hostile Waters; Merlin; The 10th Kingdom; Smallville; Alias; and 'Salem's Lot.

In 1999, Hauer was awarded the Dutch “Best Actor of the Century Rembrandt Award”.

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). He also acted as the host in the British reality television documentary Shock Treatment (2005). He recently starred in Goal! 2: Living the Dream... as Real Madrid coach Rudi Van Der Merwe.

In 2009, his role in Dazzle (Oogverblindend), by avant-garde filmmaker Cyrus Frisch, received positive reviews. The film was praised in Dutch press as "the most relevant Dutch film of the year" ('Parool' newspaper). The same year Hauer starred in the title role of Barbarossa, an Italian film directed by Renzo Martinelli. It co-starred Israeli actor Raz Degan. In April 2010, he was cast in the live action adaptation of the short and fake Grindhouse trailer Hobo With a Shotgun, which was released in 2011.

On March 4, 2011, it was announced that Hauer would play vampire hunter Van Helsing in legendary horror director Dario Argento's Dracula 3D.