Rutger Hauer, legendary star of Blade Runner, dies at 75

Legendary actor Rutger Hauer has died at the age of 75 following a short illness. The Blade Runner star passed away on July 19 at his home in the Netherlands. Hauer’s death was confirmed by his agent.

Early in his career, Hauer collaborated with Paul Verhoeven on 1973’s Turkish Delight and 1977’s Soldier of Orange. He achieved almost instant iconic status among science fiction fans with his performance in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner as the replicant Roy Batty. Batty’s death scene, partly written by Hauer himself, features one of the most famous monologues in movie history as he laments that all the wonders he has seen “will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

Hauer’s many other credits included 1985’s Verhoeven-directed Flesh+Blood, 1986’s The Hitcher, 1992’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1994’s Surviving the Game, 2005’s Sin City, the same year’s Batman Begins, the TV show True Blood, and 2011’s Hobo with a Shotgun.

In the latter film, Hauer deliberately made himself look ragged and unkempt. ”The wrinkles come and they won’t go away,” Hauer told EW. ”And there was no time for a pretty hobo!”

Last year, the actor starred in a season of the Syfy horror anthology show Channel Zero, playing the patriarch of a family of supernatural cannibals.

“We wrote this character and we were like, ‘We’ve got to get somebody amazing to play this person, somebody who, his very presence means something,’” showrunner Nick Antosca told EW. “It was actually Harley Peyton (Channel Zero writer and co-executive producer) who suggested Rutger. As soon as he said that, I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s perfect.’ The experience of shooting with Rutger was an experience I’ll always remember. Rutger’s a wonderful guy and he’s really really really smart. The stories about him, and Blade Runner, coming up with the stuff in his monologues, clearly 100 percent true. And he’s just full of endless stories. You could sit down with him, and talk about a scene, and then after 40 minutes we would have figured out what we were going to do, and then we would keep talking for a couple of hours, because he’s such an interesting person.”