HARDY KRÜGER

(12 April 1928 - 19 January 2022)

The German actor Hardy Krüger first became a successful actor in his own country before becoming something of an international star. He has died in California from a heart attack at the age of 93, after an acting career of over forty years. He rose to fame in the UK in the 1957 film The One That Got Away, in which he played Franz von Werra, an escaped wartime prisoner who managed to get as far as Canada. He was born Franz Eberhard August Krüger in Berlin to Nazi parents and attended a school named after Adolf Hitler. His acting career began in 1944 when he appeared in Junge Adler (Young Eagles) but then he was conscripted into the German army where he closely avoided execution, escaped and hid in the Tyrol until the war ended.

After the war he worked on stage and eventually made more German films until he broke into international parts with a role in the German version of Otto Preminger's The Moon is Blue in 1953. After the success of The One That Got Away, he appeared in several more British and American films including Wolf Rilla's comedy Bachelor of Hearts, Joseph Losey's Blind Date (aka Chance Meeting) and Howard Hawks' Hatari! with John Wayne, a film that was shot in and around Krüger's own farm in Tanganyika.

In France he played a veteran of the French Indochina War in Serge Bourguignon's Oscar-winning Sundays and Cybele, while Three Fables of Love was an international production in French, Italian and Spanish with Leslie Caron, Anna Karina and Monica Vitti. After other films in Spain and Italy, Krüger appeared in The Flight of the Phoenix, Robert Aldrich's aircraft jeopardy drama with James Stewart, Richard Attenborough and Peter Finch. In The Defector he played a physicist and East German spy opposite Montgomery Clift in what was to be Clift's final film, directed by Raoul Levy (who subsequently committed suicide).

Krüger was successful in whatever language he played and proved to be a very good actor, helped no doubt by his handsome good looks. He went on to appear in Stanley Kramer's The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far and Andrew V. McLaglen's The Wild Geese with Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris. He continued to make the occasional German film but in the 1980s concentrated on writing books, directing television documentaries and campaigning against far-right politics, racism and anti-Semitism. In 1989 he appeared in the TV mini-series of Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance with Robert Mitchum, Jane Seymour and John Gielgud.

Hardy Krüger was married to Renate Densow from 1950 to 1964 and they have a daughter Christine. He then married the Italian painter Francesca Marazzi from 1964 to 1977, with two children Malaika and Hardy Jr. His third wife is Anita Park with whom he lived in California and Hamburg until his death.

MICHAEL DARVELL