People
Rutger Hauer
Acting · follow into films and chains
Biography
Rutger Oelsen Hauer (January 23, 1944 – July 19, 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.
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
Blade Runner
Appears in a KinoChain journey
The Hitcher
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Batman Begins
As Earle
Sin City
As Cardinal Roark
Inside the Third Reich
As Albert Speer
Merlin
As King Vortingern
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
As President of the World State Federation
Mysteries
As Simonsen aka Johan Frederik Nagel
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
Neon Fog and the Long Way Home
From Thief's rain-slicked streets to Drive's neon avenues, a journey through neo-noir night drives where every turn tests the driver's moral compass.
8 films
Rewinding the Reel: How VHS Championed British Independents
From Thatcher's Britain to the video shop era, discover how VHS gave gritty, daring British films a second life and a devoted audience.
9 films
The Art of Listening
From the whisper of a surveillance tape to the roar of a wartime beach, these eight films prove that sound is not just heard, it is felt. A chain of masterpiece...
7 films
The Mind's Eye: Crime Films of Obsession and Interiority
From a detective's haunted pursuit to a killer's fractured psyche, this chain traces cinema's most intimate crime stories, where the real action happens inside...
8 films
20 Home Video Releases Every Film Obsessive Should Own
There was a brief, glorious period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when buying a film on home video felt less like acquiring a product and more like being han...
20 films
Topics
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Related people
Collaborators & neighbours
Acted
The Sisters Brothers
2018 · The Commodore
Samson
2018 · Manoah
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
2017 · President of the World State Federation
The 5th Execution
2011 · Khant
The Rite
2011 · Istvan Kovak
Minotaur
2006 · Cyrnan
The Poseidon Adventure
2005 · Bishop August Schmidt
Batman Begins
2005 · Earle
Sin City
2005 · Cardinal Roark
Salem's Lot
2004 · Kurt Barlow
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
2002 · Keeler
The 10th Kingdom
2000 · Huntsman
Merlin
1998 · King Vortingern
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
1992 · Lothos
Wedlock
1991 · Frank Warren
Escape from Sobibor
1987 · Alexander 'Sasha' Pechersky
Wanted: Dead or Alive
1987 · Nick Randall
The Hitcher
1986 · John Ryder
Flesh + Blood
1985 · Martin
The Osterman Weekend
1983 · John Tanner
Blade Runner
1982 · Batty
Inside the Third Reich
1982 · Albert Speer
Mysteries
1978 · Simonsen aka Johan Frederik Nagel