This one hurts.
Rutger Hauer, best known for his villainous turn as Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner, has left us. He was 75.
According to his his non-profit website Starfish Association, Hauer, “passed away peacefully in his Dutch home.”
Hauer’s managers, as well as his agent Steve Kenis, also confirmed his passing to The Wrap and added that a funeral was held for Hauer on Wednesday morning.
Hauer began his acting career in his native Netherlands working with Dutch director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct) on the 1969 medieval TV series Floris. Verhoeven cast him again in 1973’s Turkish Delight, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film for the Netherlands at the Oscars.
After the actor moved to America, he quickly rose to be an action baddie of the 80’s. He first appeared as a terrorist in the 1981 film Nighthawks, with Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams.
Hauer would gain notoriety as villainous replican Roy Batty opposite Harrison Ford as in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner in 1982:
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The actor subsequently appeared in several ’80s action and adventure hits like Ladyhawke and Flesh+Blood. But it was his turn as a sadistic hitchhiker, John Ryder, in The Hitcher that solidified Hauer as an 80’s star. Watch him manipulate and slowly terrorize C. Thomas Howell.
In the ’90s, Hauer appeared in a series of surreal and then humorous ads for the beer Guinness along with the tagline “Pure Genius.”
More recently, he starred in films such as Sin City, Batman Begins and a Reel 360 team favorite, Hobo With a Shotgun.
He’s survived by his wife Ineke, to whom he was married for 50 years.
Source: Starfish Association
