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Image:RutgerHauerProfilePic.jpg|thumb|Rutger Hauer

Rutger Hauer (born January 23, 1944, Breukelen,
the Netherlands) is an international movie star.

== Background ==

The son of drama teachers Arend and Teunke, he
grew up in Amsterdam but at age 15 ran away to the
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 1969
television series Floris, a Dutch Ivanhoe-like
medieval action show.

== Film career ==

His career changed course when director Paul
Verhoeven gave him the lead in Turkish Delight
(film)|Turkish Delight (1973) (based on the Jan
Wolkers Turkish Delight (book)|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
Wilby Conspiracy (1975). This film was set in
South Africa and starred Michael Caine and Sidney
Poitier, it 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 European film making for
several years. In this period he made Keetje
Tippel (1975), and worked again with Verhoeven on
Soldaat van Oranje (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 (movie)|Nighthawks (1981) that he
finally made his proper American debut. Cast as a
psychotically cold-blooded terrorist named
Wulfgar, he made a strong impression, which was
confirmed by a major role the following year as
the chief android Roy Batty (pitted against
Harrison Ford) in Ridley Scott's science fiction
film Blade Runner (1982).

He went on to be the adventurer courting Gene
Hackman's daughter (Theresa Russell) in Nicholas
Roeg's poorly received Eureka (1983),the
investigative reporter opposite John Hurt in Sam
Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983) and the
knight paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in the
medieval romance Ladyhawke (1985).  He continued
to make an impression on audiences, especially in
The Hitcher (1986), in which he was the mysterious
Hitchhiker intent on murdering C. Thomas Howell's
lone motorist and anyone who crossed his path en
route. At the height of his fame he was even set
to be cast as RoboCop in the same name by old
friend Verhoeven.

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 too 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 The Blood
of Heroes|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 fictions 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. It seemed that he had
increasingly become involved in lower budget
films, including Split Second (1992 movie)|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 recently New World Disorder,
opposite Tara Fitzgerald. In between these lower
budgeted films, he appeared in the music video "On
a Night Like This" by Kylie Minogue.

== Comeback ==

He has recently been on the comeback trail as
small parts in big films, with Confessions of a
Dangerous Mind (2003), Sin City (2005) and Batman
Begins (2005).

== Other activities ==

Outside of acting as an environmentalist, he
fought for the release of Greenpeace's co-founder,
Paul Watson, who was convicted in 1994 for sinking
an illegal Norwegian whaling vessel, and has set
up an AIDS research foundation called the Rutger
Hauer Starfish Foundation. He married his second
wife, Ineke, in 1985, and has a daughter from his
first marriage.

== Selected filmography ==

*Turkish Delight (film)|Turkish Delight (1973 in
film|1973)
*The Wilby Conspiracy (1975 in film|1975)
*Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange) (1979 in
film|1979)
*Spetters (1980 in film|1980)
*Nighthawks (movie)|Nighthawks (1981 in film|1981)
*Blade Runner (1982 in film|1982)
*The Osterman Weekend (1983 in film|1983)
*Ladyhawke (1985 in film|1985)
*Flesh & Blood (movie)|Flesh & Blood (1985)
*The Hitcher (1986 in film|1986)
*The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1989 in
film|1989)
*Blind Fury (1989)
*The Blood of Heroes|Salute of the Jugger (1990 in
film|1990)
*Wedlock (Movie)|Wedlock (1991 in film|1991)
*Split Second (1992 movie)|Split Second (1992 in
film|1992)
*Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992 in film|1992)
*Surviving the Game (1994)
*Precious Find (1996 in film|1996)
*Merlin (1999)
*Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002 in
film|2002)
*Sin City (movie)|Sin City (2005 in film|2005)
*Batman Begins (2005 in film|2005)

== Personal quotes ==

*"I am not really into science fiction at all
because I tend to think that it's just another
sort of game with the brain. The future, which is
fun to think about, but it doesn't really attract
me."

*"'Good guy' or 'bad guy', hero or anti hero;
doesn't matter to me, what role I play, only the
character have something magical."

*"I don't know what the appeal is. I can see I've
got blue eyes and I don't look the Hunchback of
Notre Dame but I can't understand all the fuss."

== External links ==

*imdb name|id=0000442|name=Rutger Hauer
*http://www.rutgerhauer.com/ Official Rutger Hauer
page