Rutger Oelsen
1944
ACTOR BIOGRAPHY
Rutger Oelsen Hauer was born on 23 January 1944 in Breukelen in the Netherlands. He is the son of drama teachers Teunke (née Mellema) and Arend Hauer. He has three sisters, one older and two younger.
Hauer grew up in Amsterdam. Since his parents were very occupied with their careers, he and his sisters were brought up mostly by nannies. He went to a Waldorf school.
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 joiner for three years while attending acting classes at night school. Hauer served in the Royal Netherlands Navy.
Hauer joined an experimental troupe, with which he remained for five years before Paul Verhoeven cast him in the lead role of the 1969 television series Floris, a Dutch medieval action drama. The role made him famous in his native country, and Hauer reprised his role for the 1975 German remake Floris von Rosemund. Hauer's career changed course when Verhoeven cast him in Turkish Delight (1973). The film found box office favour abroad and at home, and Hauer looked to branch out to more international productions. Within two years, Hauer made his English-language debut in the British film The Wilby Conspiracy (1975). 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). These two films paired Hauer with fellow Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé.
Rutger Hauer in Escape from Sobibor, 1987
Hauer made his American debut in the Sylvester Stallone film Nighthawks (1981) as a psychopathic and cold blooded terrorist named Wulfgar. The following year, he appeared in arguably his most famous and acclaimed role as the eccentric and violent but sympathetic anti-hero Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 science fiction thriller Blade Runner, in which he improvised the famous tears in rain monologue. Hauer went on to play the adventurer courting Theresa Russell in Eureka (1983), the investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in The Osterman Weekend (1983), the hardened Landsknecht mercenary Martin in Flesh & Blood (1985), and the knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke (1985).
He continued to make an impression on audiences in The Hitcher (1986), in which he played a mysterious hitchhiker tormenting a lone motorist and murdering anyone in his way. At the height of Hauer's fame, he was set to be cast as RoboCop though the role went to Peter Weller. That same year, 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. In The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1989), Hauer showed a more soulful side. 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 with The Blood of Heroes (1990), in which he played a former champion in a post-apocalyptic world.