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Actor once said ‘it is better to be evil and scare people rather than be the guy who works in the post office and goes home to his wife and children’
Shahana YasminMonday 24 November 2025 10:13 GMTComments
CloseHorror movie Udo Kier star dies at 81
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German actor Udo Kier, whose chilling stare and boundary-defying performances made him one of international cinema’s most memorable character actors, has died, aged 81.
His partner, artist Delbert McBride, confirmed to Variety that the actor died on Sunday morning.
Kier’s career spanned more than six decades and over 200 films, from cult horror to arthouse provocations to Hollywood mainstream.
His breakout role came in the early 1970s when he portrayed the Frankenstein monster in Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Count Dracula in Blood for Dracula (1974).
Born Udo Kierspe in Cologne on 14 October 1944, Kier entered the world during the final months of the Second World War. According to The Irish Times, the maternity hospital where he and his mother were staying was bombed shortly after his birth and they were both dug out of the rubble.
He later talked about growing up in post-war Germany in what he described as “unimaginable poverty”, telling The Guardian his family did not have hot water until he was 17.
As a teenager he worked in a factory, he said, to “get out of that misery I was born into”. At 16, in a working-class bar in Cologne, he befriended then-teenaged Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who would later become one of the leading filmmakers of the New German Cinema.
Kier’s path to acting was unconventional and he said he never intended to become an actor, and ended up being “discovered” in London when he was 19. “I was basically discovered. I never wanted to be an actor. I just wanted to learn languages and travel and see the world,” he told The Irish Times.
open image in galleryGerman actor Udo Kier has died aged 81 (Getty)He was cast in the Road to Saint-Tropez (1966), which led to a Vogue photo shoot and his first agent. Remembering those sudden turns, he later told Variety last year: “I liked the attention, so I became an actor.” His first breakout role came soon after, in the 1970 horror Mark of the Devil.”
One of the most significant chance encounters Kiers had took place on a flight in 1973, when he found himself seated next to Paul Morrissey, director of Andy Warhol’s Factory films.
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“He wanted my telephone number,” Kier told Next Best Picture in 2021. “A couple of weeks later he called: ‘I’m doing a film, Flesh for Frankenstein, and I have a little role for you.’”
Morrissey cast him first in Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and then in Blood for Dracula (1974), two cult productions that brought Kier international attention and cemented the eerie, stylised qualities that became a hallmark of his work.
open image in galleryActor Udo Kier with director Lars Von Trier at ‘Melancholia’ premiere during the 64th Annual Cannes Film Festival (Getty)Kier went on to reunite with Fassbinder, appearing in The Stationmaster’s Wife, Lola, The Third Generation, and Lili Marleen, and in the director’s epic television series Berlin Alexanderplatz.
His range widened again through a long collaboration with Lars von Trier, in films including Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and Melancholia (2011).
His approach to such parts was characteristically direct. “I like horror films, because if you play small or guest parts in movies, it is better to be evil and scare people rather than be the guy who works in the post office and goes home to his wife and children. Audiences will remember you more,” he told The Bay Area Reporter in 2021.
Though associated with arthouse cinema, Kier also had a steady presence in Hollywood throughout the 1990s, appearing in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Blade (1998) and Armageddon (1998).
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