Photo by Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty Images(THE NETHERLANDS) — Actor Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor who starred movies like The Hitcher, Sin City, and Batman Begins — but was perhaps best known for playing an artificial human in 1982’s Blade Runner — has died, his agent confirms to ABC News. He was 75.
The actor died Friday at his home in the Netherlands after a brief illness, but the actor didn’t want the news released until his funeral, which was on Wednesday.
Hauer made his American movie debut as a terrorist bomber opposite New York City cops Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams in 1981’s Nighthawks.
But Hauer’s portrayal of “replicant” Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner remains a fan favorite.
The influential 1982 film had Hauer playing the leader of a team of escaped androids who are hunted by Harrison Ford’s Deckard. Through his performance, Bauer turned Batty from a fearsome adversary to a sympathetic character, who is desperately trying to find out if the androids’ limited life spans can be extended.
When his character eventually “dies,” the memorable “tears in the rain” speech he gives beforehand — reportedly written by Hauer himself — has become a silver screen classic.
“The audience has kept his film alive in many ways,” Hauer told ABC Radio a few years ago. “I’m really happy the way it turned out and the way people carry me around [because of it]…for, like, a lifetime. And that’s just half of me of course — the other half is Roy.”
“It was one of a kind,” Hauer said of Blade Runner, adding slyly, “and you don’t f*** with one of a kind.”
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