Rutger Hauer

Interview by David Wisehart

[This interview took place in 1986.]

When Rutger Hauer landed the plum leading role of a heroic knight in Ladyhawke, he made a promise to himself: no more villains.

Some promises were made to be broken.

Hauer gives one of his most haunting and effective performances as serial killer John Ryder in The Hitcher, a new thriller co-starring C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Despite his promise, Hauer felt that the part of the psychopathic hitchhiker was too good to pass up. “The script hit me pretty hard,” he explains. After reading the script, Hauer met with Robert Harmon, the director, and was shown Harmon’s previous short film, China Lake. He was so impressed that he immediately agreed to play Ryder. “Wednesday I got the script; Thursday I saw the director and the film; Friday a deal was made. I’ve never made a decision so quickly.”

Hauer isn’t overly concerned about portraying a villain in this particular instance. “I liked the script and I liked the director. I thought I could do something interesting to the character. I liked his vague identity. He doesn’t really exist. Well, he does and he doesn’t. I liked that a lot. I like to kind of nail a character’s personality down without naming it. Just by acting it out,” he says, adding that he also took the role to get it out of his system.

But the popular view of Hauer as a villain has little basis in fact, he claims. “Yes, I played a villain in Nighthawks, and then there was The Osterman Weekend. I’m known for one and a half villains, I would say, because I don’t consider my character in Blade Runner a villain.”

Of Hauer’s twenty-six films [up to The Hitcher], only seven have been American projects. The other were filmed in his native Holland or in Germany, Belgium, and England. Still, Hauer hasn’t escaped stereotyping. “I feel as if I’m known for villains. I do like it in the sense that I don’t think there would have been another way to get into this country and get work. I can’t see that (Hollywood directors) would offer me a leading role coming from Europe. I wasn’t ready for that. I’m kind of looking at this as a step, a phase. People ask, ‘What is this villain bit you’re doing?’ Part of it is not true, and part of it is that I want to do everything I can.”

When Hauer was first approached by director Richard Donner about Ladyhawke, Donner wanted Hauer as the villain. Hauer declined: “I said, ‘Sorry, but I don’t want to do that anymore. But if you want to let me play the good guy, the male lead, I’m here.’” Donner wasn’t the least bit interested in Hauer as a lead, and went shopping for a younger actor. However, that actor later stepped away from the role — ten days before shooting was to begin — and Donner was in a bind. Thus, Hauer was offered his first heroic role in an American feature.

It wasn’t his first starring role, however. He played a gallant freedom fighter in Soldier of Orange. Filmed in Europe, it was released in America in 1979 and subsequently won the L.A. Film Critics Award. It was his most successful film to date and served as his calling card when he arrived in the States in 1980. “That was the film that did it for me,” he says.

Hauer still recalls what led him towards a career in acting. “I saw a film when I was seven that really hit me. I didn’t think I was going to be an actor at the time, but the image of that film and that character has been sitting in my mind for a long, long time. That was James Dean in Giant. I also admired Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen.”

Though Hauer has worked with a number of well-known directors and actors, he declines to mention those he would like to work with in the future. “There are quite a few, but I would rather not put them in print to the exclusion of others. One of the most exciting things about this business is working with talented unknowns. Robert Harmon was unknown before (directing The Hitcher), and it was very exciting to see him come to this project and succeed.”

Hauer has also lost the accent he had when he first came to America. “If I feel there are any blockades to success,” he says, “I’ll get rid of them. I want to be open to a lot of work. I’m getting closer.”