We’ve got some sad and unexpected news to report this week as the great Rutger Hauer has reportedly passed away. Hauer’s agent recently confirmed that he died on July 19th at his home in The Netherlands after a short illness. Hauer is best known for his iconic performance as Roy Batty, the sympathetic replicant antagonist of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. He had a handful of lead roles in well-known genre movies throughout the ’80s before settling into a career as a respected character actor. He was 75 years old.

Rutger Hauer got his start as an actor in The Netherlands in the ’60s before Paul Verhoeven cast him in the lead role in a Dutch TV series called Floris and he became a box office star after the 1973 drama Turkish Delight. He would later team up again with Verhoeven for the films Soldier of Orange and Spetters before making his American debut in Nighthawks with Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams. Blade Runner followed a year later and this led to roles in such films as The Osterman Weekend, Ladyhawke, The Hitcher and Flesh + Blood (the latter of which was also directed by Verhoeven).

He won a Golden Globe for the WWII TV movie Escape from Sobibor and throughout the ’90s he was receiving smaller parts but still appeared in movies like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Surviving the Game. In the 2000s, he had supporting roles in Batman Begins and Sin City and a great comeback of sorts with the Grindhouse trailer spin-off flick Hobo with a Shotgun in 2010. He was made a knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 2013 and most recently he had appeared in True Blood, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and The Sisters Brothers. What are your favourite Rutger Hauer performances?