Legendary German actor Udo Kier has breathed his last at the age of 81. His partner and artist Delbert McBride confirmed his death to Variety on Sunday. Kier has acted in over 200 films, predominantly German, but also a bunch of Hollywood movies. He’s also starred in memorable music videos and voiced some prominent characters in landmark fantasy movies.
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Kier began his career back in 1966 with the German short film Road to Saint Tropez. His debut feature, Shameless, released in 1968. However, his breakthrough happened with Michael Armstrong’s 1970 period horror film Mark of the Devil. He went on to appear in a number of horror and thriller films, including Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), which was released as Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein in the US, in which he played the titular monster character.
He also played another classic horror character, Count Dracula, in Morrissey’s Blood for Dracula the next year. In 1981, he essayed Dr. Henry Jekyll in Walerian Borowczyk’s Docteur Jekyll et les femmes. Kier’s most storied collaboration kicked off in 1987 when he starred as a fictionalized version of himself in Lars von Trier’s 1987 Danish medical dark comedy Epidemic, in which the filmmaker played the lead role.
Since then, Kier has starred in almost all of Trier’s films, except The Idiots, The Boss of it All, Antichrist, and The House That Jack Built. Following his global crossover, Kier appeared in a bunch of Hollywood films, including Tom Shadyac’s 1994 comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective alongside Jim Carrey and Steve Barron’s fantasy franchise The Adventures of Pinocchio.
Kier also starred in a number of popular music videos across English and German, most memorably in a couple of songs from Madonna’s 1992 album Erotica. He had a deep baritone himself as he voiced characters in popular animated superhero shows, like Music Master in Justice League and Herbert Ziggler in The Batman.
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Kier’s final role was as Hans in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian neo-noir period political thriller The Secret Agent, which released in cinemas just earlier this month. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and was also selected as Brazil’s official entry for the Best International Feature category at the Academy Awards next year.
