LOS ANGELES, United States — Udo Kier, the German cult icon whose haunting stare and unforgettable presence made him one of cinema’s most recognizable character actors across Europe and Hollywood, has died at 81.
Kier died on Sunday morning in Palm Springs, California, his partner Delbert McBride told Variety. His close friend, photographer Michael Childers, also confirmed the news on social media. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
With a career spanning more than five decades and over 275 screen roles, Kier carved a distinct niche as a performer who could slip effortlessly into the bizarre, the menacing, and the surreal.
He played vampires, Nazis, monsters, outcasts, and eccentrics — often in films that pushed against the boundaries of mainstream cinema.
“I like horror films,” Kier once said. “If you play small or guest parts, it is better to be evil and scare people than be the guy who works in the post office and goes home. Audiences will remember you more.”
Born Udo Kierspe in 1944, his entry into the world was almost cinematic in itself. Hours after his birth, the hospital where he and his mother were was bombed, and both had to be rescued from the rubble.
His childhood in postwar Germany, he later said, was marked by poverty and hardship. “We had no hot water until I was 17.”
As a teenager working in a factory, he befriended a 15-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder in a Cologne bar — a meeting that foreshadowed a lifelong artistic connection. Kier later moved to London to study English, where he was discovered in a coffee shop and nudged into acting. His breakout came in the 1970 horror film Mark of the Devil.
Kier’s life and career were punctuated by serendipity. A chance encounter on a plane with Andy Warhol collaborator Paul Morrissey led to Kier’s starring roles in Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), performances that cemented his cult reputation.
He went on to appear in several Fassbinder films — Lili Marleen, Lola, The Third Generation, The Stationmaster’s Wife — as well as the director’s seminal miniseries Berlin Alexanderplatz.
In the 1980s, Kier entered what would become another defining collaboration, this time with Danish auteur Lars von Trier, who cast him in projects ranging from Medea to Breaking the Waves, Dogville, Melancholia and Nymphomaniac. He became godfather to one of Von Trier’s sons.
His distinctive style also caught the attention of Gus Van Sant, who gave him his first major American role in My Own Private Idaho (1991). Kier’s performance captivated Madonna, who cast him in her controversial 1992 book Sex and two music videos.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Kier appeared in a string of Hollywood productions, including Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Johnny Mnemonic, Armageddon, End of Days, and Blade, often in small but unforgettable roles.
He continued to work prolifically in his later years, starring in S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete. In 2022, he delivered a rare leading performance in Swan Song, playing a flamboyant retired hairdresser who escapes a care home for one last job.
Reflecting on his long career, Kier once joked: “100 movies are bad, 50 movies you can see with a glass of wine, and 50 movies are good.”
Kier’s final film is the political thriller The Secret Agent, in which he portrays a Jewish Holocaust survivor navigating the last years of Brazil’s military dictatorship. He is also set to appear posthumously in OD, the highly anticipated horror video game from Japanese creator Hideo Kojima and American filmmaker Jordan Peele.