Rutger Hauer

Rutger Oelsen Hauer (born January 23, 1944) is a Golden Globe-winning Dutch film actor. He is well known for his roles in Blade Runner, The Hitcher, The Blood of Heroes, and Batman Begins.

Film career 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 hardly enough to establish him in Hollywood's eyes, 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.

In the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Nighthawks (1981), Hauer finally made his American debut. Cast as a psychopathic and cold-blooded terrorist named "Wolfgar" (after a character in Beowulf), he made a strong impression. The following year, he appeared in his stand-out American movie role as the eccentric, violent, yet sensitive replicant Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi thriller, Blade Runner.

Hauer went on to play the adventurer courting Gene Hackman's daughter (Theresa Russell) in Nicolas Roeg's poorly received Eureka (1983); the investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983); the hardened Landsknecht mercenary Martin in Flesh & Blood (1985); and the knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in the Medieval romance Ladyhawke (1985). He continued to make an impression on audiences in The Hitcher (1986), in which he was the mysterious Hitchhiker intent on murdering C. Thomas Howell's lone motorist and anyone else who crossed his path. At the height of Hauer's fame, he was even set to be cast as RoboCop in the film directed by old friend Verhoeven, although the role ultimately went to Peter Weller. That same year, however, 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.

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). Hauer 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 work together again in two more science fiction films, Wedlock and Precious Find.

By the 1990s, Hauer was as well known for his humorous appearances in Guinness commercials as for his screen roles, which had increasingly involved low-budget films, including Split Second, which was set in a flooded London after global warming; Omega Doom, another post-apocalyptic story in which he plays a soldier-robot; and New World Disorder, opposite Tara Fitzgerald. He also appeared in the Kylie Minogue music video "On a Night Like This". In the late 1980s and 1990s, as well as in 2000, Hauer acted in several British and American television productions, including Inside the Third Reich (as Albert Speer); Escape from Sobibor; Fatherland; Hostile Waters; Merlin; The 10th Kingdom; Smallville; Alias; and ’Salem’s Lot.

In 1999, Hauer was awarded the Dutch “Best Actor of the Century Rembrandt Award”.

(Excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutger_Hauer)