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| Birth Name(s) : Rutger Oelsen Hauer |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
Ineke ten Kate (1985 to date) |
| Profession:
N/A |
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Full Rutger Hauer Biography
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 drama classes at night school. He went on to join an experimental acting troupe, which he stayed with for five years before getting the lead role in the very successful 1969 television series Floris, a Dutch Ivanhoe-like medieval action show, which made his name in the Netherlands.
His 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 hardly enough to establish him in Hollywood's eyes, and he returned to Dutch film making for several years. In this period he made Katie Tippel (1975), and worked again with Verhoeven on Soldier of Orange (1979), and Spetters (1980). Incidentally these two films also paired Hauer with fellow international Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé.
It was in the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Nighthawks (1981) that Hauer finally made his American debut. Cast as a psychopathic, cold-blooded terrorist named "Wolfgar" (after a character in Beowulf}, he made a strong impression. This was confirmed the following year by his stand-out American movie role as the eccentric, violent, yet sensitive chief replicant Roy Batty (pitted against Harrison Ford) in Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi thriller, Blade Runner.
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). He 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 again work together in two more science fiction films: Wedlock and Precious Find.
Hauer has played villains in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2003), Sin City (2005), and Batman Begins (2005), as well as playing the Host in the British reality television documentary Shock Treatment (2005). He will also star in the horror film Pathology.
Hauer is 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 set up an AIDS awareness foundation called the Rutger Hauer Starfish Foundation. He married his second wife, Ineke, in 1985 (they have been together since 1968) and has one child, actress Aysha Hauer, who was born in 1966, and who made him a grandfather in 1988.
In April of 2007 he published his autobiography titled All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants, and Blade Runners where he discusses many of his movie roles. Proceeds of the book go to Hauer's Starfish Foundation. |
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