The actor Helmut Berger, known for his roles in several films by the legendary Italian director Luchino Visconti, died Thursday in his native Salzburg, reports the Austrian news agency APA.
Berger was one of the great stars of European cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, considered by his followers as one of the most attractive men in the world.
« Il est parfait. Et il a depuis l’adolescence ces mêmes doux hystérismes, une melancolie identique, plus désespérée à mesure qu’il prend de l’âge… »
(Luchino Visconti)Helmut Berger, 1944-2023 pic.twitter.com/ZMJmaz4QyW
— The Cinémathèque (@cinemathequefr) May 18, 2023
On May 29, the actor, who openly defined himself as bisexual, was going to turn 79.
His agent, Helmut Werner, said in statements to APA that Berger died early Thursday morning “peacefully if surprisingly.”
Born in 1944, Berger began in the cinema as an extra, until Visconti discovered him in 1964. Three years later he offered her to participate in The witchesdirected by six hands with Mauro Bolognini and Franco Rossi, and in 1969 Berger played an important role in The fall of the godsaccording to the review half 20 minutes.
The actor participated in other films such as Ludwig, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ash Wednesday, faceless and The Godfather III.
Berger shot in the 1960s and 1970s films with Hollywood stars such as Elisabeth Taylor, Henry Ford, Burt Lancaster or Romy Schneider.
For years, Berger was a lover of Visconti, his mentor and one of the great film directors of the time, and after his death in 1976 the actor fell into a deep depression, according to the Spanish agency efe.
In 1994 he married the Italian actress Francesca Guidato, from whom he separated some 15 years later.
For many critics, Helmut Berger personified the breaking of sexual taboos in European cinema, by playing narcissistic and bisexual characters, the Spanish agency points out.
