Rutger Hauer

Rutger Hauer is an icon of cinema, an actor who has worked with various world-famous filmmakers, including Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Phillip Noyce, Lina Wertmüller, Ermanno Olmi, Robert Rodriguez, as well as the Dutch director Paul Verhoeven. Son of two actors, Hauer has acting in his blood and his first time on stage was at the age of five, but it was only when Verhoeven chose him for the title role in the film Floris , in 1969, that his career really began. After his English-language debut in The Wilby Conspiracy, Hauer starred in films such as Soldier of Orange and Nighthawks. Roy Batty, eccentric and violent, but empathetic anti-hero of Blade Runner is probably his most famous and critically acclaimed role. Subsequently, Hauer is the protagonist ofEureka,The Osterman Weekend, Flesh+Blood and Ladyhawke, and then continues to impress audiences as the mysterious hitchhiker who torments a lone motorcyclist in The Hitcher.
In the following years, Hauer played the title role in Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, Blind Fury, On a Moonlit Night, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Merlin. In April 1999 he was awarded the Dutch “Rembrandt Award for Best Actor of the Century”. The first half of the 2000s saw Hauer increasingly expanding his curriculum with works such as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,Sin City, Batman Begins, True Blood, Hobo With a Shotgun, The Mill and the Cross, with the role of Van Helsing in the legendary horror film directed by Dario Argento Dracula 3D, and with Michelangelo. Recently, he was chosen for 24 Hours to Live as Ethan Hawke’s antagonist and will be the protagonist of Luc Besson’s next work, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. An artist and philanthropist with a passion for hats, Hauer also produced several documentaries during the 1990s, was an active part of organizations such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, and established an AIDS awareness organization in 2000, called “Rutger Hauer Starfish Association”, which aims to find aid and funds for research and prevention projects and for educational programs. In 2006 he founded the “Rutger Hauer Film Factory”, in collaboration with the “In Holland” School of Communication and Media. In 2007 he co-authored a book (co-written with Patrick Quinlan) entitled “All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants, and Blade Runners,” in which he reflects on many of his film roles. In September 2008, in the Netherlands, he was awarded the prestigious Golden Calf Culture Award. In 2013 Hauer received the “Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw” award (Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion).