Rutger Hauer, famous for playing Roy Batty in the all-time science fiction classic Blade Runner, has died aged 75. Hauer’s agent Steve Kenis has revealed that the actor passed away on July 19th at his home in the Netherlands, and that his funeral took place today.
While Roy Batty remains his most iconic role, Hauer was a highlight in many movies over his career, appearing in Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City as Cardinal Roark and in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins as William Earle, the slimy executive who runs Wayne Enterprises while Bruce is absent during training.
He’s been a fixture in cinema since the early 1970s as well, showing up in two early Paul Verhoeven movies: Turkish Delight and Soldier of Orange. Those films garnered international attention, with his subsequent work drawing the attention of Ridley Scott, who cast him as Batty without an audition.
His performance as desperate replicant Roy Batty is now legendary, though Hauer shocked the entire cast and crew by initially appearing on set in candy pink trousers and Elton John sunglasses. But this was just a prank on Scott, with executive producer Katy Haber explaining that: “After the initial shock, [Hauer and Scott] were a match made in heaven.” His input on Roy Batty was such that he rewrote the famous death soliloquy, too, modifying it from what he described as “opera talk” and “hi-tech speech” to the moving and mysterious poetry that helped put the movie on the map.
You’re going to hear it over and over again in the next few days, but let’s have that marvelous bit of writing one more time:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
RIP Rutger Hauer, you’ll be missed.