HELMUT BERGER
(29 May 1944 - 18 May 2023)
The Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who has died aged 78, became known for playing controversial characters that at times reflected his own personality. Bisexual by nature, he had many and varied relationships with famous film and music people. Top of the list would be the Italian director Luchino Visconti who had a great influence on Berger's career. He directed Berger in his first film, Le streghe (The Witches) in 1967 when Berger was just 23. It was both a personal and working relationship that saw the actor in further Visconti films as well as having a very substantial career working with other directors on some seventy films in all.
He was born Helmut Steinberger in Bad Ischi in Austria to Franz and Hedwig Steinberger, a family of hoteliers. Helmut began training in the hospitality industry, although he was never interested in hotels or catering. He came to London at eighteen and had various jobs while studying acting. He took language courses in Italy and met Visconti who cast him in Le streghe. After a couple of other Italian films, he was in Visconti’s The Damned playing the heir to a 1930s German industrialist family fortune, in which he dragged up as Dietrich. After playing Dorian Gray in Massimo Dallamano’s film, Berger worked for Vittorio De Sica, playing Alberto in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, about the lives of a Jewish family during the Fascist era. It won an Oscar for best foreign language film.
More films came along and he was kept very busy, often making several films a year. In 1973 with Visconti he played Ludwig, Emperor of Austria from 1864 to 1866, who turned out to be an eccentric gay Wagner lover who built his fantasy castles at Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee. Later he was declared insane. Berger appeared to have the right temperament for the role and the film won Donatello Awards for best film, best director, best actor (Berger) and best costume design.
In the same year, he appeared with Elizabeth Taylor and Henry Fonda in Ash Wednesday, Larry Peerce’s drama about cosmetic surgery. Visconti’s Conversation Piece starred Burt Lancaster as a professor and Berger as a gigolo hoping to marry a countess. It was Visconti’s second-to-last film but Berger went on to work for Joseph Losey on The Romantic Englishwoman, Tinto Brass’s Salon Kitty, Claude Chabrol’s Fantomas, Karoly Makk’s Deadly Game and he was in Coppola's The Godfather Part III. He also supported Roy Scheider in Iron Cross (aka Beautiful Blue Eyes) about the search for a Nazi officer, and played Lord Burghersh in Bernard Rose’s The Devil’s Violinist, about the virtuoso Niccolo Paganini. Among many other films, he was the subject of two documentaries in 2015 and 2019. Back in 1983 he had found time to play Peter De Vilbis in the Dynasty television series.
Berger’s busy personal life saw him in relationships with both Visconti and the actress Marisa Berenson. He married the writer and model Francesca Guidato but they separated after 16 years. He was popular in social circles and had affairs with, among others, Nureyev, Natalie Delon, Tab Hunter, Linda Blair, a couple of Jaggers and the Spanish pop star Miguel Bosé. In later life he struggled with alcohol and drugs and on the German TV version of I’m a Celebrity... he left after two days with health problems.
In his day, however, Helmut Berger was a handsome, intelligent actor able to pin down characters who were often harmed in some way or just on the edge between sanity and madness. Perhaps his own life contributed to an ability to play roles that might seem uncomfortable but nevertheless were completely credible.
MICHAEL DARVELL