Horst Buchholz

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Horst Werner Buchholz (4 December 1933 – 3 March 2003) was a German actor, remembered for his part in The Magnificent Seven and Nine Hours to Rama. He appeared in over sixty films during his acting career from 1952–2002.

Life and work

Buchholz was born in Berlin, the son of Maria Hasenkamp. He never knew his biological father but took the surname of his stepfather Hugo Buchholz, a shoemaker, who his mother married in 1938. In 1941 his half-sister Heidi was born. She gave him the nickname "Hotte" which he retained for the rest of his life. During World War II he was evacuated to Silesia and at the end of the war found himself in a foster home in Czechoslovakia. He returned to Berlin as soon as he could. He barely finished his schooling before seeking theatre work, first appearing on stage in 1949. He soon left his childhood home in East Berlin to work in West Berlin. He established himself in the theatre, notably the Schiller Theatre, and also on radio. He expanded into film after dubbing work, accepting small and uncredited parts from 1952. He had a marginally larger role in Marianne de Ma Jeunesse (1954) directed by Julien Duvivier. He won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his part as Mischa Bjelkin in Helmut Käutner's Himmel ohne Sterne. His youthful good looks next brought him a part in Die Halbstarken (1956). His breakthrough film was Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull (1957) in which he played the lead, it was directed by Kurt Hoffmann and based on the novel by Thomas Mann.

In 1958 Buchholz married French actress Myriam Bru, and they had two children. Their son, Christopher, became an actor and also produced a documentary about his father.

Horst Buchholz began appearing in foreign films from 1959 when he was in the British production Tiger Bay. He followed that with The Magnificent Seven (1960) and the Berlin-set One, Two, Three (1961) directed by Billy Wilder. He also starred in the dramatic 1961 romance, Fanny, with Maurice Chevalier and Leslie Caron. A versatile actor, he took the parts as they arose and appeared in comedies, horror films, wartime dramas and other genres. His best work was in the 1960s: the critical quality of the films in which he took part diminished from the mid 1970s, with poorly regarded made-for-TV movies and episodic television making up the majority of his appearances, except in The Saviour, directed in 1971 by the French film critic Michel Mardore. In certain films he was allowed to show his skills such as the bleak I skrzypce przestaly grac (1988), and the Oscar-winning Life Is Beautiful (1997).

In 2000, he talked about his bisexuality for the first time in the German tabloid Die Bunte.

He died in the Berlin Charité from pneumonia at the age of sixty-nine. This was a city to which his loyalty was constant, and he was buried there in the Waldfriedhof Dahlem.

Selected filmography

Marianne de ma jeunesse (1954)

Himmel ohne Sterne (1955)

Die Halbstarken (1956)

Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull (1957)

Nasser Asphalt (1958)

Tiger Bay (1959)

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Fanny (1961)

One, Two, Three (1961)

The Empty Canvas (1963)

Nine Hours to Rama (1963)

That Man in Istanbul (1965)

Cast a Giant Shadow (1966)

Cervantes (1967) as the title role

Le Sauveur/ The Saviour (1971)

Derrick

Season 3, Episode 11: "Das Superding" (1976)

Season 5, Episode 8: "Solo für Margarete" (1978)

Season 7, Episode 8: "Auf einem Gutshof" (1980)

Season 10, Episode 2: "Die Tote in der Isar" (1983)

Raid on Entebbe (1977)

Logan's Run Season 1, Episode 3: "Capture" (1977) as James Borden

Aphrodite (1982)

Sahara (1983)

Réquiem por Granada (1990)

Aces: Iron Eagle III (1992)

Faraway, So Close! (1993)

Life Is Beautiful (1997)

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