He was an unforgettable “Ludwig” in Visconti, his mentor and lover: at 78, actor Helmut Berger died on Thursday after burning life at both ends, becoming over the years a figure of the jet set to the “sex, drugs and rock’n roll” way of life.
“I have lived three lives. And in four languages! I don’t regret anything, ”he said, mixing English and French, his agent recalled Thursday.
The Austrian, one of whose last screen appearances dates back to Saint Laurent de Bonello in 2014, died “peacefully but suddenly in his hometown of Salzburg” in Austria, “shortly before his 79e anniversary “.
Before leading “the sweet life all his life”, Helmut Berger was one of Visconti’s favorite actors, who noticed him for his incandescent beauty and entrusted him with the roles of tormented aristocrats, which stuck to his skin.
In The Damned (1969), on the rise of Nazism, Helmut Berger disguises himself as Marlene Dietrich, in Ludwig, the twilight of the gods (1972), he is a dark Prince Louis of Bavaria with repressed homosexuality, alongside Romy Schneider replaying the character of Sissi, then in Violence and Passion (1974) a young gigolo.
The meeting between the maestro and the Austrian Apollo took place in the mid-1960s on the set of Sandrafilm by Visconti with Claudia Cardinale.
Helmut Berger, then Helmut Steinberger, born May 29, 1944 in Bad Ischl, western Austria, is a waiter and model, taking acting lessons. Finding himself by chance on the set in Italy, he caught the eye of Visconti who quickly made him one of his favorite actors.
Like a certain Alain Delon with whom he maintains a tenacious enmity.
Addictions
“I didn’t like how he behaved with Luchino, Nathalie [Delon] and Romy [Schneider]. Here, everyone forgave the god of French beauty everything. But I know others, beauties: the David in Florence, it’s not bad either ”, laughed Helmut Berger during an interview with the French daily. Release in 2015.
Among his other roles, Helmut Berger also shot under the direction of Vittorio de Sica in The garden of the Finzi Contini (1970), on the rise of anti-Semitism in Italy, in an adaptation of Dorian Gray by Massimo Dallamano, in A romantic Englishwoman by Joseph Losey…
But after Visconti’s death in 1976, he fell into alcohol and drugs.
Apart from an appearance in the 3e pane of Godfather in 1990, he now has few major roles and occupies the pages people for his addiction problems, his legal convictions and the account of his crazy evenings in Rome, where he lives.
In 2007, he was awarded a Teddy (LGBT prize) for his entire career at the Berlinale.
“The favorite of all the parties of the jet set international lived until the end happy, satisfied and in a good state of mind in Salzburg ”, where he had returned to live, underlines his agent Helmut Werner in a press release again on Thursday.