It was with enormous sadness that we learned today that Rutger Hauer has passed away at the age of 75. The Dutch actor and philanthropist was a mainstay in Dutch film and television since the 1970s, before moving to American productions in the 1980s and blowing audiences away with brilliant performances in action, sci-fi, fantasy, drama and horror films.

I grew up with Rutger Hauer’s movies, watching Blade Runner and Ladyhawke and Blind Fury repeatedly on television. To me he was as iconic a movie star as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. His persona wasn’t steely or superficial. He was always thoughtful, playful, and full of hidden depths. His characters were rarely banal tough guys or two-dimension villains, they were tragic figures whose violence was rarely, if ever, to be celebrated.

In short, although he spent most of his career with roles in “genre” films, and many of them so-called “b-movies,” he was always an actor first and foremost. He elevated every project just by showing up and giving one hell of a performance. And as I look back on Hauer’s career – with an emphasis on his horror/action/sci-fi filmography – I’m struck by just how consistent he was. You could rely on a Rutger Hauer movie. It was almost always worth watching.

Younger generations probably know Rutger Hauer best from his fine supporting roles in films like Batman Begins and Sin City, but we’re focusing today on the films where he gave standout performances. These films were great specifically because Rutger Hauer was a part of the production, whether he was the star, the villain, or just a scene-stealing maniac.

Rest in peace, Rutger Hauer. Your memories won’t be lost.

14. Surviving the Game (1994)

Rutger Hauer leads a team of rich psychopaths who lure a homeless man, played by Ice-T, into the forest and hunt him for sport. Surviving the Game doesn’t add many new dimensions to the “Most Dangerous Game” genre, but with a dynamite cast – which also includes Gary Busey, Charles S. Dutton, John C. McGinley and Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham – and satisfying, action-packed direction by Ernest R. Dickerson (Demon Knight), it’s an excellent b-movie thriller, anchored by a great villainous performance from Hauer.

13. Split Second (1992)

The year is 2008 and global warming has flooded London, where burned-out tough guy cop Harley Stone (Hauer) tracks a serial killer who, it turns out, is a giant monster. Kim Cattrall, Neil Duncan and Pete Postlethwaite co-star in an inventive, strange sci-fi thriller that’s full of weird influences and unexpected plot twists. Hauer knows how to play the tortured tough guy but he also knows how weird this material is, and isn’t afraid to veer into cheesiness and earn a good laugh.

12. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

Hauer plays a small but fantastic role in George Clooney’s directorial debut, based on the highly implausible autobiography of Chuck Barris who claimed, when he wasn’t creating The Dating Game and The Gong Show, he was also a CIA assassin. Sam Rockwell is perfectly strange and charming as Barris, but Hauer – playing a fellow assassin who fancies himself a bit of a shutterbug – steals the show from the future Oscar-winner. He truly loves his work, as barbaric as it is, and you can’t help but admire him for it. A little.

11. Fatherland (1994)

Hauer stars as a Nazi SS Major in 1964, decades after Germany won the war and conquered all of Europe. Now, just before an important diplomatic summit with America, retired Nazi officers are getting murdered and it’s up to Hauer to solve the mystery, and uncover the most horrifying cover-up in world history. Audiences know exactly where Hauer’s investigation will lead him in this alternate reality whodunnit, but that very surreal self-awareness lends the story an added layer of morbidity, and infuses Hauer’s performance with tragic complexity. This award-winning HBO production has been largely forgotten over the last 25 years, but it warrants rediscovery today.

10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie was quickly overshadowed by the superior television series, but there’s a lot to like about Fran Rubel Kuzui’s jokier version. Kristy Swanson plays Buffy, a teenager who discovers she’s the latest in a long line of vampire hunters, and gets trained by Donald Sutherland to destroy the immortal bloodsucker Lothos, played by a delightfully camp Rutger Hauer. The actor had an excellent sense of humor, when his roles allowed him to use it, and his comedic chemistry with Paul Reubens – who has one of the best death scenes in vampire movie history – is cheerfully diabolic.

9. Nighthawks (1981)

Rutger Hauer made his American debut with Bruce Malmuth’s Nighthawks, which was originally developed as The French Connection III but eventually became a standalone film starring Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams as cops trying to catch a terrorist. Hauer plays the villain, an alluring but disturbing monster who puts Stallone’s New York cop through the ringer. Nighthawks feels like it’s halfway between a fun Stallone thriller and a serious terrorism drama. Whether that’s entirely satisfying may be up to the individual viewer, but Hauer is clearly the film’s centerpiece, making a name for himself as a handsome but dangerous lead and setting himself up for an impressive international career.

8. Hostile Waters (1997)

Rutger Hauer leads an excellent cast in this Made-For-TV disaster thriller, based on the true story of the K-219 Soviet submarine. An undersea collision is flooding the vessel, which leads to a chain reaction that fills the submarine with poison gas and could set off the nuclear weapons inside. Meanwhile, the American fleet thinks Hauer’s ship is about to nuke the United States, and prepares to destroy them while they themselves are desperately trying to save their own lives and prevent World War III. Although it lacks the production value of sub thrillers like Crimson Tide or The Hunt for Red October, the film has all the tension of a Grade-A blockbuster, and Hauer’s sharp performance provides an exceptional anchor.

7. Ladyhawke (1985)

Richard Donner’s fantasy epic Ladyhawke is a bizarre film that seems hopelessly at war with itself. The tale it tells, about a knight who transforms into a wolf at night, a lady who transforms into a hawk during the day, and the love they are forbidden to share, is beautifully timeless. The cheerful synth score and comic relief performance by Matthew Broderick, however, are hopelessly 1980s. Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable, epic adventure with beautiful performances by Hauer as the knight/wolf and Michelle Pfeiffer as the lady/hawk. Hauer rarely got to play a straightforward, dashing hero, and he proves right here that he was wonderful at it.

6. The Blood of Heroes (1989)



From David Webb Peoples, the writer of Unforgiven and co-writer of Blade Runner, comes a post-apocalyptic sci-fi sports movie like no other. Rutger Hauer stars as the captain of a team of roving athletes, who travel from town to town, challenging local teams in a sport played with dog skulls. If they win, they are paid in tribute. But the affluent cities are building their own leagues, and the stakes are getting brutally high. Hauer leads an impressive ensemble that includes Joan Chen, Delroy Lindo and Vincent D’Onofrio, and helps transform a very bizarre concept into one of the most satisfying, albeit unsung post-apocalyptic thrillers.

5. Blind Fury (1989)

An American remake of the 17th Zatoichi movie, Zatoichi Challenged, about a blind swordsman accompanying a bratty kid to Las Vegas to rescue his father from southern fried gangsters might not sound like a great idea for a movie… but it is. Blind Fury stars Hauer as a disarmingly friendly action hero, whose action-packed story is as funny as it is exciting, and as exciting as it is endearing. The film’s big climax, in which Hauer duels the legendary Sho Kosugi to the death, is a freakin’ hoot.

4. Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)

Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun began as a fake trailer for the movie Grindhouse, which appeared in some Canadian releases of the film. When the movie, about a hobo with a shotgun (obviously) turned into a feature-length production it became a sublimely odd entity. Hauer stars as the title character, a homeless man who dreams of making enough money to buy a lawnmower and make a living doing yard work. But he lives in a Troma-esque nightmare community filled with over the top oppression and violence, and eventually it’s up to him to kill just about everybody. It’s lurid, it’s outlandish, and Hauer gives a fantastically rich performance as the title character. His monologue to a roomful of newborn infants, about their futures and his own fate, is riveting drama.

3. Flesh + Blood (1985)

Before Paul Verhoeven made a splash in America with RoboCop (which Verhoeven wanted to star Rutger Hauer, but the studios balked), he made the vicious and subversive historical thriller Flesh + Blood. Hauer stars as the leader of a gang of mercenaries, who kidnap a young maiden, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and take over a castle, only to fight off a siege of soldiers and fall victim to the plague. There’s no hint of romanticism in Verhoeven’s epic, only sex and violence and disease, with religious zealotry and corrupt politics and cynical opportunism ruling the land and its people. Challenging and unusual (and enormously unprofitable), Flesh + Blood is unlike the other historical adventures of its day, to its great credit, and Hauer gives a pitch-perfect performance in it.

2. The Hitcher (1986)

C. Thomas Howell picks up a hitchhiker in the middle of the desert, and proceeds to have his life utterly destroyed. Rutger Hauer plays the title character, an unstoppable maniac whose crimes are so unbelievably monstrous that no one believes they actually happened. As he hunts Howell and his Flesh + Blood co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh across the dunes, shooting helicopters out of the sky and strapping innocent people between trucks, he gradually reveals himself as one of the ultimate cinematic boogeymen. Unstoppable, to even his own horror, The Hitcher is Hauer’s most frightening role, and it’s a spectacular, thrilling movie.

1. Blade Runner (1982)

Rutger Hauer gives his most iconic performance in Ridley Scott’s trailblazing sci-fi masterpiece, playing the replicant Roy Batty, an artificial human being who will stop at nothing to live longer than he’s programmed to. He does villainous things, but the depth of the storyline – built upon the mind-blowing ideas of Philip K. Dick – presents his quest as an existential journey, a man visiting the gods who made him and demanding the respect he deserves. His final scene, as he ponders the brief but wondrous events of his life as his timer ticks down, is one of the most powerful scenes of its kind, and gives Scott’s stylish production a beautiful, tragic soul.