Skip to main content
Rutger Hauer

Rutger Hauer

Actor · 1944 – 2019 · Breukelen, Utrecht, Netherlands

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.

Movies24

  • Movie7.7

    Batman Begins

    2005 · 23K votes

  • Movie7.9

    Blade Runner

    1982 · 15K votes

  • Movie7.5

    Sin City

    2005 · 9.1K votes

  • Movie6.7
  • Movie6.1

    Iron Mask

    Тайна печати Дракона

    2019 · 568 votes

  • Movie6.9

    The Hitcher

    1986 · 1.1K votes

  • Movie6.1

    The Rite

    2011 · 2.3K votes

  • Movie6.7
  • Movie6.8

    The Sisters Brothers

    2018 · 2.1K votes

  • Movie7.0

    Ladyhawke

    1985 · 1.3K votes

  • Movie5.1
  • Movie6.0

    24 Hours To Live

    2017 · 731 votes

  • Movie6.6

    Flesh + Blood

    1985 · 452 votes

  • Movie6.5

    Blind Fury

    1989 · 519 votes

  • Movie6.0

    Goal II: Living the Dream

    2007 · 715 votes

  • Movie6.4

    Nighthawks

    1981 · 511 votes

  • Movie5.6

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer

    1992 · 944 votes

  • Movie6.0

    Split Second

    1992 · 375 votes

  • Movie5.8

    Samson

    2018 · 259 votes

  • Movie6.3

    Fatherland

    1994 · 142 votes

  • Movie5.8

    The Blood of Heroes

    1989 · 166 votes

  • Movie5.2

    Mysteries

    1978 · 12 votes

  • Movie7.7

    Knockin' on Heaven's Door

    1997 · 615 votes

  • Movie6.8

    Turks Fruit

    Turkish Delight

    1973 · 218 votes

Series24

  • TV8.2

    Smallville

    2001 · 4.6K votes

  • TV5.1

    De Wereld Draait Door

    2005 · 8 votes

  • TV7.6

    True Blood

    2008 · 2.1K votes

  • TV6.6

    American Playhouse

    1982 · 8 votes

  • TV8.3

    The Last Kingdom

    2015 · 2K votes

  • TV7.2

    Omnibus

    1967 · 9 votes

  • TV5.3

    V Graham Norton

    2002 · 6 votes

  • TV7.0

    Lexx

    1997 · 146 votes

  • TV6.8

    Alias

    2001 · 728 votes

  • TV7.0

    Channel Zero

    2016 · 324 votes

  • TV7.0
  • TV7.3

    Galavant

    2015 · 170 votes

  • TV7.6

    The 10th Kingdom

    2000 · 273 votes

  • TV6.0

    Salem's Lot

    2004 · 207 votes

  • TV7.0

    Merlin

    1998 · 321 votes

  • TV7.5

    The Max Headroom Show

    1985 · 12 votes

  • TV7.7

    Porters

    2017 · 12 votes

  • TV5.3

    Mata Hari

    2017 · 10 votes

  • TV5.8

    Metal Hurlant Chronicles

    2012 · 68 votes

  • TV8.0

    Inside the Third Reich

    1982 · 1 votes

  • TV6.3

    Le Vol des cigognes

    Flight of the Storks

    2013 · 9 votes

  • TV8.0

    Floris

    1969 · 13 votes

  • TV8.0

    Il principe del deserto

    The Law of the Desert

    1991 · 1 votes

  • TV8.0

    Floris von Rosemund

    1975 · 2 votes