Introduction to Udo Kier
With his angular facial features and ice-blue eyes, the face of German actor Udo Kier was unmistakable. He played everything from Adolf Hitler to monsters and vampires in over 200 films. With a repertoire ranging from high-end pulp to art house films and blockbusters, he often starred alongside Hollywood greats. Kier gained widespread recognition for his starring role in the 2021 film Swan Song, in which he played Pat, a gay hairdresser living in a nursing home who gives his all for one last important job.
Friendship with Lars von Trier
Kier had a close collaboration with the Danish director Lars von Trier. They first worked together on the Iron Age epic "Medea" in 1988, and Kier was later involved in von Trier’s successful productions "Melancholia" (2011) and "Nymphomaniac" (2013). The Dane trusted Kier so much that the actor was reportedly able to choose any role from a script. Kier told the German news magazine that he most often chose characters that evoked humor.
A Lucky Man
Kier once said his acting career was thanks to luck – and the fact that he even survived his childhood. Shortly after his birth in Cologne in 1944, Kier and his mother were buried under rubble in a bombing raid during World War II. Miraculously, his mother was able to free them both from the rubble. After graduating from school, Kier completed training as a wholesale clerk and then worked on the assembly line at the car manufacturer Ford. With the money he earned, Kier decided to fly to London, where he met Italian director Luchino Visconti and actor Helmut Berger in a bar – his first contacts in the film industry.
Early Career
In 1966, Kier made his first film appearance in the British comedy “Road to St. Tropez” as a heartthrob seducer. He became much better known in the early 1970s with leading roles in the cult horror films “Blood for Dracula” and “Flesh For Frankenstein” by Andy Warhol. In Germany, Kier worked closely with the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with whom he was also friends and with whom he lived for a while in Munich. Together they shot, among other things, the crime miniseries “Berlin Alexanderplatz” (1980) and the feature film “Lili Marleen” (1981). Fassbinder’s sudden death in 1982 affected Kier deeply.
Breakthrough in Hollywood
In the 1980s, Kier often worked with Christoph Schlingensief. In 1986 he appeared in Schlingensief’s "Egomania – Island without Hope" and in 1996 he played a gay UN general in Africa in "United Trash". His breakthrough in Hollywood came in 1991 with “My Own Private Idaho,” a film about the lives of two hustlers Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves). Director Gus Van Sant approached Kier in Berlin. The actor once explained that he generally did not ask directors for roles himself. Kier is also known for the diversity of his film roles, from starring in the 1998 blockbuster superhero film Blade to appearing in 2012’s Iron Sky – a low-budget pulp film about Nazis colonizing the dark side of the moon.
Supporter of the Arts
Kier’s other passion was art, as he grew up in Cologne when artists Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Rosemarie Trockel were on the rise. David Hockney was one of his best friends. Kier was one of the few people who knew the anonymous street artist Banksy personally. In his home in Palm Springs, California, he collected works by Joseph Beuys, Peter Lindbergh and Wolfgang Tillmans – some with the dedication “For Udo”. But he also collected cheap paintings simply because he liked them. The documentary “Arteholic” (2014, directed by Hermann Vaske) created a cinematic monument to Kier as a great art lover and portrayed him in encounters with works of art and artists, including Trockel and Jonathan Meese.
Age, New Stories
Kier worked well into old age. In 2020 he directed the series “Hunters” with Al Pacino and in 2021 the fantasy horror thriller “The Blazing World”. The following year he filmed “AEIOU – A Quick Alphabet of Love” with his good friend, the director Nicolette Krebitz. Even at almost 80, Kier was open to new forms of storytelling and played a character in Hideo Kojima’s upcoming video game "OD," which explores the boundaries between film and gaming. In 2025, he appeared in Kleber Mendonca Filho’s neo-noir thriller The Secret Agent. Kier died on November 23 at the age of 81 in a hospital in Palm Springs, California.
