Rutger Hauer Doing Things His Way

Added: 12/02/2007

Many of the stories you hear about successful actors are stories of people that knew from a very young age what they wanted to do and applied themselves to their trade for years until they found success. Others used acting as a way to avoid the responsibility of real life and to do the things they want to do in their own way. Rutger Hauer is more like the latter, a lot more.

Rutger Hauer was born in Breukelen, Utrecht, Netherlands on January 23, 1944. His father was actor Arend Hauer and his mother was an actor as well. The family was not together very much as the elder Hauers found themselves on the road a lot with their acting work and the acting workshop they ran together throughout the Netherlands. So Rutger Hauer and his sisters found themselves at home with a nanny most of the time and Rutger Hauer used this time without his parents to his advantage. Rutger Hauer was not very good in school and often decided that spending time with his grandfather on his grandfather's schooner was more appealing that trying to hammer out his days in school so Rutger Hauer would spend days with his grandfather on the high seas and soon Rutger Hauer thought he had found his calling. When he was 15 years old Rutger Hauer ran away from home and took up working of a sea freighter for a year and this is where he was hit with a Hauer family reality that he feared may keep him off the high seas. Rutger Hauer, like his great grandfather before him, is color blind and a sea freighter has no use for a young man that cannot tell what color the different ropes and levers are on the ship so he had to leave that sea freighter and find his own way in the world.

He tried school again this time going to night school while he paid his way in life by working construction but once again Rutger Hauer just could not find any enthusiasm with his studies and he yet again failed himself out of school. His parents decided that what the young Rugter Hauer really needed was to follow in their footsteps and get into the craft of acting and enrolled him in drama classes at a local drama school. But, once again, Rutger Hauer had decided to do things his way and fancied himself more of a poet than an actor and spent all of his time writing poetry and visiting the local coffee houses to commune with other poets. Needless to say his lack of attendance once again got him kicked out of a school and so Rugter Hauer decided that the only thing for him was to get back on the high seas so he joined the Dutch Navy.

Rutger Hauer was unaware how different life on a military ship was compared to a freighter and soon he began to fall out of love with being in the navy. He convinced his superiors that he was mentally unstable and got himself confined to a military psych hospital for a brief period. After some further convincing the Dutch Navy decided that Rutger Hauer was not military material and discharged him. After the military he joined a pantomime group for a few years and in 1968 he finally started acting. His ability to speak Dutch, German, and English quickly got him roles that allowed him to escalate up the ladder to the point where he was now a world famous actor. His blond hair and dashing good looks quickly got him lead roles and soon Rutger Hauer had found that thing that he can do really well that he could make a living at. He became so well known that Anne Rice modeled the character of Lestat in The Interview With A Vampire after Rutger Hauer and in 1995 the Dutch mail service even issued a Rutger Hauer stamp commemorating his role in Turkish Delight. Not bad for a guy who could get nothing else right.

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