20 Friday Lifestyle | Features Friday, July 26, 2019 Blade Runner actor Rutger Hauer dies aged 75 ollywood actor Rutger Hauer, who became a global cult Hicon for his role as the scary yet thought-provoking hu- manoid android in the 1982 sci-fi classic “Blade Runner”, has died at the age of 75. Hauer’s non-profit HIV/AIDS charity, the Rutger Hauer Starfish Association, said on his website it was announcing “with infinite sadness that after a very short illness, on Friday, July 19, 2019, Rutger passed away peacefully at his Dutch home”. Dutch media said Hauer was buried at a private ceremony as the film world paid tribute. “RIP the great Rutger Hauer: an in- tense, deep, genuine and magnetic actor that brought truth, power and beauty to his films,” Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro Del Toro tweeted. “Rutger was to me what Marcello Mastroianni was to (Federico) Fellini, an alter ego,” fellow Dutchman director Paul Verhoeven, who gave Hauer his first big break, told the Dutch national ANP news agency. “I’m especially deeply sad that he’s Lebanese pianist, composer and playwright Ziad Rahbani performs during the Beirut Holidays 2019 Festival at the waterfront in the here no more. I am going to miss him terribly,” he said. Lebanese capital. — AFP Piercing blue eyes Set in a dystopian Los Angeles of 2019 and directed by Ridley Scott, Bladerunner catapulted the tall, blonde Dutch actor with piercing blue eyes to international stardom. His last haunting monologue in the movie as the genetically engineered replicant Roy Batty could perhaps stand as his own obituary: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe... all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” “Half of Roy is me,” said Hauer, who went on to play a number of memorable menacing bad guys who sent shivers down audiences’ spines. uentin Tarantino’s new film is a love letter to Hollywood- garabedian, senior analyst at Comscore. “He’s one of maybe five and an important test of whether the under-pressure in- directors of all time that people on the street know his name au- Qdustry can still make hits that aren’t tried-and-tested tomatically-it’s Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford superhero franchises or nostalgic reboots, analysts say. “Once Coppola... people not in the industry know Tarantino,” he added. Upon a Time in Hollywood” is set in 1969 as Tinseltown pivoted Tarantino has also been able to lure the industry’s top talent- from an era of clean-cut matinee idols to the shaggy-haired Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly took a pay cut to work again with counter-culture of Roman Polanski, Dennis Hopper and-more the director after collaborating on “Django Unchained.” “As an au- troublingly-Charles Manson’s clique of murderous hippies. dience, no matter what they think of the movie, they know they’re Its world of idealistic auteurs, loyal stunt doubles and Spaghetti in for an incredibly unique experience,” DiCaprio said at Monday’s Westerns has already tugged at the heartstrings of cinephiles and glitzy premiere in Hollywood’s iconic TCL Chinese Theater. “And film critics, earning rave reviews. But when it opens at movie the- that’s why people keep coming back,” he told journalists. How aters Friday, it will land midway through a year that is far from a many will come this time remains to be seen. But while “One Upon Hollywood fairytale. Domestic movie box offices are down more a Time” won’t touch last week’s whopping $190 million “Lion than seven percent from 2018, according to Comscore-something King” opening, analysts say a healthy $30 million is realistic. remarkable in a year that has seen superhero blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame” become the highest-grossing film of all time. Ten and done Strip out parent company Disney’s other lucrative, long-estab- Even if he can buck the current “blockbuster or bust” trend, This file photo taken on September 01, 2007 shows Dutch Rutger lished franchises-with “Toy Story 4,” “Aladdin” and “The Lion any boost Tarantino can offer Hollywood is likely to be short-lived. Hauer posing during a photocall at Venice. — AFP King,” the Mouse House accounts for over 40 percent of this year’s The “Pulp Fiction” director says he will retire from directing after box office-and 2019 looks bleak for original movies. With TV and his 10th movie. “Once Upon a Time” is number nine. Rumors he On the 30th anniversary of the film’s release in 2012, Hauer told web streaming also muscling in on its profits, Hollywood is watch- could sneak in an R-rated new “Star Trek” movie before he calls it reporters in Milan that it “was completely delicious to work on. I ing closely to see if the “Tarantino effect” can help buck this trend quits have stirred hope among devotees. But if even Tarantino can’t even fathom how it feels to be alive and an icon basically in which only established mega-franchises succeed. switches to franchise filmmaking, it could be a seminal moment in because of this movie”. Starring Harrison Ford as a special police Hollywood’s direction of travel. For now, Hollywood is just happy agent sent to hunt down renegade replicants who have returned Brand Tarantino to see him making waves. “It’s getting harder and harder to get to Earth from human colonies in space, “Blade Runner” initially The stakes are high because Tarantino is viewed as something original content to a big cinema,” said Brad Pitt, the film’s other bombed at the box-office. But it went on to become a cult movie, of a dying breed in Hollywood-a distinctive director creating orig- marquee star, at Monday’s premiere. “Thank god Tarantino’s got attracting a devoted fan-base. “I feel that the wings of ‘Blade Run- inal films that people flock to see. If Tarantino cannot succeed, it one more left in him,” he added. — AFP ner’ are literally carrying me around. It’s unbelievable and beau- bodes poorly for the summer’s few other original movies such as tiful,” Hauer told Italian television in a 2016 interview. critically acclaimed family drama “The Farewell,” said Paul Der- Young rebel Born on January 23, 1944 in Breukelen just outside Amsterdam to Dutch parents who were both actors and ran an acting school, the young Hauer showed an early rebellious and wild streak. At 15 he ran away to sea, travelling the world on a Dutch Merchant Navy freighter picking up English, German, French and Italian on the way. After returning to the Netherlands, he took up acting properly joining a touring company bringing theatre to Dutch vil- lages. In 1969 he got his first real break when he was cast in the lead role of a swashbuckling historical Dutch television series called “Floris” directed by the then little known Verhoeven. It trig- gered a years-long collaboration between the two, although it was said they fell out in the mid-80s. Verhoeven cast Hauer in his first major film role in “Turkish Delight” in 1973. But it was when Hauer was teamed up with Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone in the 1981 Director Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Leonardo DiCaprio attend the Sony Pictures’ ‘Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood’ thriller “Nighthawks” that he first came to the attention of Amer- Los Angeles Premiere.—AFP ican audiences. —AFP.