Rutger Hauer

Sad news today...

Rutger Hauer, a rugged Dutch actor who played Nazis, action heroes and bloodsucking vampires, but who was best known as the android outlaw in the science-fiction thriller “Blade Runner,” died July 19 at his home in Beetsterzwaag, a village in the Netherlands. He was 75.

He won a Golden Globe for best supporting actor for “Escape From Sobibor,” a 1987 TV movie about an uprising at a Nazi death camp — he played the Jewish hero, against type — and in 2005 was a morally corrupt Catholic cardinal in “Sin City” and a greedy Wayne Enterprises executive in “Batman Begins.” 

Mr. Hauer also starred in the 1985 medieval fantasy “Ladyhawke,” alongside Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer; played a vampire king in the 1992 movie “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”; and ruled a supernatural tribe in the HBO series “True Blood.” 

But Mr. Hauer, who described himself as “a very nonviolent person,” soon returned to the menacing characters that made him famous. He starred as an SS officer in the TV movie “Fatherland” (1994), was a vampire in the TNT miniseries “Salem’s Lot” (2004, adapted from a Stephen King novel) and played a bloodthirsty businessman in “The Sisters Brothers” (2018), a Western starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix. 

“It’s so much fun to playfully roam into the dark side of the soul and tease people,” Mr. Hauer told the Associated Press in 1987. “If you try to work on human beings’ light side, that’s harder. What is good is hard. Most people try to be good all their lives. So you have to work harder to make those characters interesting.”

He was great in Blade Runner and many other movies and TV shows.

He will be missed.