The German actor Udo Kier died this Sunday at the age of 81, as confirmed by his partner Delbert McBride, and the American magazine announced it Variety. Friend of Andy Warhol, David Hockney or Keith Haring, He has participated in more than 200 cult titles, almost always in secondary characters. Paul Morrissey, Dario Argento, Gus van Sant, Lars von Triery, of course, Rainer Werner Fassbinder were his teachers and Kier, his favorite actor.
In 2021 he signed his first leading role with Todd Stephens, which saw him as the protagonist The swan song playing a colorful hairdresser who is brought out of retirement into a nursing home to bring a former client who has just died back to her glory years.
He was born in Cologne, the son of a single mother and the only survivor (along with her newborn son) of an Allied bombing that destroyed the walls of the maternity ward where she had just given birth. He was a forced vegetarian: “because my mother could only give me soup, soup, soup,” he recalled in interviews. That was until he was 17, when he went to England. “Not because I wanted to be an actor. What I wanted was to work in a company like Bayer and travel the world,” he told EL PAÍS.
There they convinced him to dedicate himself to acting, “when the newspapers were talking about the new wave of cinema”, and he liked the attention. Also around that time he met a young Fassbinder, 15, at a trucker’s bar and their friendship developed into collaboration and camaraderie.
Kier didn’t remember the scripts of the films he’d made, but he remembered the moments that led him to accept them. For example, when Van Sant, whom he met at the Berlin Film Festival, asked him to work on it My private Idaho.“I thought directors must feel very alone at festivals and that’s why they offer roles,” he told this newspaper in 2021. He was impressed by the Alexander Payne avocado tuna tower they ate together when he met him for A great life. And from John Carpenter, the milk he put in his coffee, from Musso & Frank, when he offered it to him Cigarette burns (The end of the world in 35mm).
The relationship with Von Trier also began during a festival, but in this case it was Kier who initiated the search. I had just seen The element of crime and decided she needed to meet him. They worked together for more than 30 years and he was the godfather of their eldest daughter.
In the same year Kier appeared The secret agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film for which actor Wagner Moura received the best actor award at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
