PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — Udo Kier, the German actor whose icy gaze and strange, scene-stealing screen presence made him a favorite of filmmakers including Andy Warhol, Gus Van Sant and Lars von Trier, has died at 81.
His partner, artist Delbert McBride, told Variety that Kier died on Sunday in Palm Springs, California.
A longtime arthouse favorite, Kier also had an unlikely run as a character actor in Hollywood blockbusters including “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” with Jim Carrey.
Actors Helmut Berger and Udo Kier, photographed during the shooting of the film “The Fifth Commandment,” Dec. 1, 1977. (Horst Ossinger/dpa via AP, File)
Actors Helmut Berger and Udo Kier, photographed during the shooting of the film “The Fifth Commandment,” Dec. 1, 1977. (Horst Ossinger/dpa via AP, File)
The most recent of Kier’s more than 200 credits in a nearly 60-year career was this year’s Brazilian political thriller “The Secret Agent,” which could vie for Oscars and other major awards in the coming season.
Kier had his breakout as the star of two films produced by Warhol and directed by Paul Morrissey: 1973’s “Flesh for Frankenstein” and 1974’s “Blood for Dracula.”
Actor Udo Kier attends a news conference for the film ‘Daughter Of Mine’ during the 68th edition of the International Film Festival Berlin, Berlinale, in Berlin, Feb. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
Actor Udo Kier attends a news conference for the film ‘Daughter Of Mine’ during the 68th edition of the International Film Festival Berlin, Berlinale, in Berlin, Feb. 18, 2018. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder put Kier in several films later in the decade, including “The Stationmaster’s Wife” and “The Third Generation.”
Kier was introduced to many American moviegoers through Van Sant’s 1991 film “My Own Private Idaho,” starring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. Madonna, a fan of that film, invited Kier to appear in photos for her 1992 culture-shaking book “Sex,” and in the video for her song “Deeper and Deeper.”
Kier credited Van Sant with getting him a U.S. work permit and a Screen Actors Guild card.
Those documents allowed him to bring his arresting presence to several Hollywood films of the 1990s, including “Armageddon,” “Blade,” “Barb Wire” and “Johnny Mnemonic.”
Actors Udo Kier, center, and Babara Colen, right, pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film “Bacurau” at the 72nd international film festival, Cannes, southern France, May 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris, File)
Actors Udo Kier, center, and Babara Colen, right, pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film “Bacurau” at the 72nd international film festival, Cannes, southern France, May 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris, File)
He was a constant collaborator with von Trier, starring in the Danish director’s television series “The Kingdom” and appearing in the films “Dancer in the Dark,” “Dogville” and “Melancholia.”
Kier was born Udo Kierspe in Cologne, Germany, in 1944, as Allied forces bombed the city during World War II.
Actors Stellan Skarsgard, back, and Udo Kier pose for photographs with fans upon arrival at the premiere of the film “The Painted Bird” at the 76th edition of the Venice Film Festival, Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2019. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File)
Actors Stellan Skarsgard, back, and Udo Kier pose for photographs with fans upon arrival at the premiere of the film “The Painted Bird” at the 76th edition of the Venice Film Festival, Venice, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2019. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP, File)
He moved at age 18 to London, where he was discovered at a coffee bar by singer and future filmmaker Michael Sarne.
“I liked the attention, so I became an actor,” Kier told Variety last year.
People noticing him for his striking presence and approaching him became a lifelong pattern.
“I have never asked a director, ‘I would like to work with you,’” he said.
Kier had lived in the Palm Springs area since the early 1990s, and was a regular and frequent party host at its annual film festival.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV welcomed Spike Lee, Cate Blanchett, Greta Gerwig and dozens of other Hollywood luminaries to a special Vatican audience Saturday celebrating cinema and its ability to inspire and unite.
Leo encouraged the filmmakers and celebrities gathered in a frescoed Vatican audience hall to use their art to include marginal voices, calling film “a popular art in the noblest sense, intended for and accessible to all.”
“When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console, but challenges,” he told the stars. “It articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we didn’t know we needed to shed.”
The encounter, organized by the Vatican’s culture ministry, followed similar audiences Pope Francis had in recent years with famous artists and comedians. It’s part of the Vatican’s efforts to reach out beyond the Catholic Church to engage with the secular world.
But the gathering also seemed to have particular meaning for history’s first American pope, who grew up in the heyday of Hollywood. The 70-year-old, Chicago-born Leo just this week identified his four favorite films: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Sound of Music,” “Ordinary People,” and “Life Is Beautiful.”
Pope Leo XIV meets with Spike Lee during an audience with and stars directors from the cinema at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. (Vatican Media Via AP)
Pope Leo XIV meets with Spike Lee during an audience with and stars directors from the cinema at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. (Vatican Media Via AP)
In a sign of how seemingly star-struck he was, Leo spent nearly an hour after the audience greeting and chatting amiably with each of the participants, something he rarely does for large audiences.
Drawing applause from the celebrities, Leo acknowledged that the film industry and cinemas around the world were experiencing a decline, with theaters that had once been important social and cultural meeting points disappearing from neighborhoods.
“I urge institutions not to give up, but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value” of movie theaters, he said.
Celebrities just happy to be invited
Many celebrities said they found Leo’s words inspiring, and expressed awe as they walked through the halls of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, where a light luncheon reception awaited them after the audience.
“It was a surprise to me that I even got invited,” Spike Lee told reporters along the red carpet gauntlet in the palace.
During the audience, Lee had presented Leo with a jersey from his beloved Knicks basketball team, featuring the number 14 and Leo’s name on the back. Leo is a known Chicago Bulls fan, but Lee said he told the pope that the Knicks now boast three players from the pope’s alma mater, Villanova University.
Actress Cate Blanchett leaves at the end of an audience of Pope Leo XIV with actors and directors from the cinema, at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Actress Cate Blanchett leaves at the end of an audience of Pope Leo XIV with actors and directors from the cinema, at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Blanchett, for her part, said the pope’s comments were inspiring because he understood the crucial role cinema can play in transcending borders and exploring sometimes difficult subjects in ways that aren’t divisive.
“Filmmaking is about entertainment, but it’s about including voices that are often marginalized and not shy away from the pain and complexity that we’re all living through right now,” she said.
She said Leo, in his comments about the experience of watching a film in a dark theatre, clearly understood the culturally important role cinemas can play.
“Sitting in the dark with strangers is a way in which we can reconnect to what unites us rather than what divides us,” she said.
A ‘hit and miss’ guest list that grew
The gathering drew a diverse group of filmmakers and actors, including many from Italy, like Monica Bellucci and Alba Rohrwacher. American actors included Chris O’Donnell, Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann, his wife.
Director Sally Potter said she was impressed that Leo took the time to speak with each one of them. And she said she loved his comments about the value of silence and slowness in film.
“It was a good model of how to be and how to think about cinema,” she said, noting especially Leo’s defense of “slow cinema” and to not see the moving image just in terms of algorithms.
Actress Greta Gerwig leaves at the end of an audience of Pope Leo XIV with actors and directors from the cinema, at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Actress Greta Gerwig leaves at the end of an audience of Pope Leo XIV with actors and directors from the cinema, at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Director Gus Van Sant said he liked Leo’s vibe.
“He was very laid back, you know, he had a fantastic message of beauty in cinema,” he said.
Archbishop Paul Tighe, the No. 2 in the Vatican culture ministry, said the guest list was pulled together just in the last three months, with the help of the handful of contacts Vatican officials had in Hollywood, including Martin Scorsese.
The biggest hurdle, Tighe said, was convincing Hollywood agents that the invitation to come meet Leo wasn’t a hoax. In the end, as word spread, some figures approached the Vatican and asked to be invited.
“It’s an industry where people have their commitments months in advance and years in advance, so obviously it was a little hit and miss, but we’re very pleased and very proud” by the turnout, he said.
The aim of the encounter, he said, was to encourage an ongoing conversation with the world of culture, of which film is a fundamental part.
“It’s a very democratic art form,” Tighe said. Saturday’s audience, he said, was “the celebration of an art form that I think is touching the lives of so many people and therefore recognizing it and giving it its true importance.”
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Visual journalists Trisha Thomas and Isaia Montelione contributed.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
“I think a lot of the films I’ve made, even unintentionally, have been based on real things,” Van Sant says with his familiar mix of understatement and curiosity. “That’s a genre, I guess. I’ve always been drawn to what makes people do what they do.”
In “Dead Man’s Wire,” Van Sant’s latest film, which premiered at AFI Film Festival on Saturday, that fascination becomes electrified — literally. The historical true-crime drama, based on the real-life 1977 Tony Kiritsis hostage case, unfolds like a pressure cooker between desperation and spectacle.
“When I read the script,” he recalls, “there were links embedded in it — you could click them and hear the real 911 calls. Tony talked so fast, like Scorsese on a cocaine bender, cracking jokes and losing his temper. I thought, ‘This is an amazing character.’”
Van Sant’s words carry a quiet thrill, the sound of an auteur who has spent a career balancing empathy and danger. From “Drugstore Cowboy” and “My Own Private Idaho” to the Oscar-nominated “Good Will Hunting” and “Milk,” he’s never chased a single genre; only human behavior.
“The story had this weird barnstormer energy,” he shares. “We were meeting in the Soho House, and the producer said, ‘We have to start shooting in Louisville in two months.’ That was the most appealing thing — just hitting the road like Huckleberry Finn.”
Now 73, Van Sant is nostalgic when talking about creative chaos. “The best thing about film is still the accident,” he says. “River Phoenix used to love when something unexpected happened on set. He’d come alive inside those moments — he could feel his character reacting in real time.”
That memory lingers, as does the one of the fog machines at the 1998 Oscars that made him physically ill while “Good Will Hunting” (1997) lost most of its awards to “Titanic.”
“I’m allergic to stage fog now,” he says with a chuckle. “So I never use it on set.”
It’s been seven years since his last theatrical film (“Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot”), but Van Sant is back with a story that echoes his fascination with real American tragedy and absurdity — a director drawn, as ever, to the ragged edge between empathy and obsession.
With “Dead Man’s Wire,” Van Sant delivers his most arresting and charged work since “Milk.” The film hums with the restless energy that defined his early 1970s-like masterpieces while showcasing a sharpened maturity in tone and control. Skarsgård gives a career-best performance, grounding Tony Kiritsis’ volatility with flashes of humor and heartbreak, while Dacre Montgomery and Colman Domingo deliver richly textured performances. Dark horses for the Oscars? Of course. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be considered. In particular, Van Sant’s direction is at once intimate and explosive, framing the chaos with empathy, allowing the audience to feel the pulse of desperation behind every decision. The film’s screenplay, adapted from real events by first-time screenwriter Austin Kolodney, is infused with humanism and dark wit, standing as one of the year’s finest.
In a wide-ranging interview with Variety, Van Sant talks about his past, present and future in the industry he’s spent over four decades mastering.
‘Dead Man’s Wire”
Stefania Rosini SMPSP
Looking at your filmography, this fits with your interest in real-life characters and crimes.
Yeah, I think so. A lot of my films, even the fictional ones, are based on something from the real world — a news story or an article. “Drugstore Cowboy,” “Elephant,” and “Last Days” all came from that impulse. It’s not “true crime” like television, but it’s about what makes someone act a certain way — that question inside the crime.
How did you settle on Bill Skarsgård for Tony and Dacre Montgomery for Richard?
Casting was probably as important as the script. I was at a spa one weekend, listening to ambient music, trying to decide if I should jump into this project immediately — we had to start shooting in November. I’d always wanted to work with Bill. I’d offered him roles before that didn’t happen. He has this fascinating career — horror films, yes, but he’s like Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces. He’s also 10 years younger than the real Tony, which made it interesting.
Dacre I knew because of his audition tape for “Stranger Things.” It’s one of those legendary tapes actors pass around — perfect lighting, perfect eyelines. I didn’t even watch the show at first, just his scenes. He felt new, unpredictable, and that was what the movie needed.
And Colman Domingo as the radio DJ — it’s such an inspired choice.
We actually modeled that character after the DJ in “The Warriors.” That was in the script. We had a few actors pass before Colman came aboard. He was working with our producer, Cassian Elwes, on another project and said, “I’d love to work with Gus.” He was perfect — his presence grounds the film.
Fans always ask if you’d ever revisit “Drugstore Cowboy.”
Actually, there are screenplays that the same writer wrote — James Fogle. There were four different ones, and one of them is called “Satan’s Sandbox,” that I think James Franco wanted to do, but that was the one I kind of preferred. It’s set in San Quentin prison. And actually, when we met him and made the movie, he was in Walla Walla State Penitentiary in Washington State, and so he had some stories when they were out of prison, like “Drugstore Cowboy,” when they were running around, selling drugs and stealing drugs. So there are other ones, yeah, there are other ones that exist.
River Phoenix was so prolific in your cinema journey. He definitely is one of the core reasons I, myself, fell in love with movies. How often does he cross your mind?
I mean, I think about him all the time — there’s a picture on the wall of him. He was sort of like, you know, a very great collaborator. And we only did that one piece, and we were planning on — he was planning on being in what turned out to be “Milk.” But that didn’t happen till later, before he died, so there was a project that we were talking about. But, yeah, he was very spontaneous. He loved to improvise. That was his favorite thing. And I don’t think he got to, necessarily, depending on who he was working with, go off the page and improvise. It probably wasn’t the type of films that he was doing — he was doing traditional pieces that were pretty much, like, securely in Hollywood. You know, he was doing traditional pieces, that’s what he was offered.
And in that environment, you’re not making a film like — you know, like you’re mentioning Scorsese — where they improvise whole scenes. And when we did, he found out that I liked it, you know, that I was okay if he just did something for like five minutes that wasn’t even in the screenplay, because then he could actually research stuff, and he could feel very open about what he was playing. So that was kind of magical, that he liked it, and he had not been able to do it. So he was very excited about it, because he wasn’t normally doing it.
I don’t know, there’s lots of things. His upbringing was such that he didn’t really have a lot of film history connected to his memory banks. He was homeschooled, so he didn’t have a lot of teaching that he knew about concerning war. His homeschooling consisted of, like, no war. So characters like General MacArthur weren’t in his world — he didn’t know who they were. And then conversely, he didn’t know what humor was. He didn’t know what, like, a quote-unquote joke was, until he was nine, he said.
He found that out because he went to a traditional school — a public school — and kids were telling jokes. It was an era when kids were all about jokes. He didn’t know what they were; they were just like a foreign thing to him. He also didn’t have a smile, which people don’t necessarily know. He told me that — he said, ‘Well, I don’t have a smile.’ And I said, ‘You’re kidding.’ And then he smiled and showed me his smile, and I said, ‘Oh yeah, I don’t see that smile in your films.’
So he had this interesting thing — for a movie star, an interesting absence of that kind of giant smile. But meanwhile, he was very funny, and his most favorite thing was just to laugh and tell stories.
You’ve been nominated twice for an Oscar. What do you remember about those mornings?
Mostly that I didn’t realize when the announcements were happening. I woke up to a bunch of phone calls. It’s the big Hollywood prize — it feels great. At the ceremony for “Good Will Hunting,” they unveiled this huge Titanic ship set, and fog rolled out everywhere. I got so sick sitting there, I swore I’d never use fog on my sets again.
There’s a lot of talk about the “death” of cinema. Do you believe that?
Not at all. Movies always follow technology — from nickelodeons to iPhones. What matters is the gathering, that communal experience. The art form isn’t dying; it’s just shifting. The best films of the 1920s were miracles because nobody knew what cinema was yet. We’re in another one of those periods of discovery.
Can we expect another film soon? Or do we have to wait another seven years?
I hope so. I did the Gucci project and six hours of “Feud,” so I haven’t been idle. There are hundreds of ideas — digital files full of them. Some might take decades, like “Milk” did. But they’re there, waiting.
A rushed follow-through leaves the film’s mere 105 minutes feeling somewhat purposeless in the grand scheme of things. Courtesy Venice Film Festival
There’s something to be said about movies that are just good enough, especially those that refashion real events into cinematic junk food. It is, however, hard not to be disappointed when one such work comes from Gus Van Sant, which makes Dead Man’s Wire a frustrating experience despite its climactic vigor. The tale of a disgruntled Hoosier who takes a rich man hostage in 1977, the film re-creates the lengthy standoff in immense visual detail but rarely probes beneath the surface of its colorful characters and relegates any sense of tension or intrigue to its climactic scenes.
Van Sant has made several biopics (or pseudo-biopics) involving American gun violence, from the Palme d’Or-winning school shooter drama Elephant (2003) to the Oscar-winning gay rights drama Milk (2008). After decades of doing so, any artist is likely to lose their fascination with the subject, given how it’s ground to a standstill politically. And yet, the director presses on despite this, crafting a film where the threat of pulling a trigger is rarely riveting and even verges on doltish at times, as troubled Indianapolis resident Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) tethers a wire to himself, his shotgun, and his wealthy would-be victim Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), in a kind of janky proto-Saw trap set to go off if the police intervene. But while the drama seldom feels zealous or threatening, it’s underscored by disappointment and disillusionment, the kind that has driven the weary Kiritsis to hold Hall at gunpoint.
DEAD MAN’S WIRE ★★1/2 (2.5/4 stars) Directed by: Gus Van Sant Written by: Austin Kolodney Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Colman Domingo, Al Pacino, Cary Elwes, Myha’la Running time: 105 mins.
Whatever Van Sant’s feelings about this kind of subject matter may have once been, he appears to now translate them through a lens of sheer exhaustion. “Here,” the movie gestures wearily. “Another one of these. Pew pew.” It is, on one hand, fascinating to watch a film whose director seems fed up with his own characters and with the very premise of being driven to gun violence while fashioning oneself into a martyr. And yet, Van Sant’s Taxi Driver-esque tale (by way of Fargo; his delusional anti-hero is surprisingly polite) lives in the body of a based-on-real-events saga without embodying the reality from which it draws.
Kiritsis, like Van Sant, is methodical, and the character responds to each of his plans going awry with a scrappy backup ploy (and a backup to each backup). This results in him kidnapping Hall from the fancy offices of his family mortgage company instead of his elderly father (an underutilized Al Pacino), who happens to be on vacation, and taking Hall to his cramped apartment as a number of policemen—with whom he happens to be friends—roll their eyes while in pursuit. Kiritsis’ motives are gradually revealed, and his demands involve apologies and restitution. His public declarations over the TV and radio establish how heroically he sees himself, so it’s no surprise that he foolishly believes the world to be entirely on his side, to the point that he thinks he’s in no danger of being arrested once things are all said and done.
It’s all very interesting on paper. The oddball case makes you wonder whether a crime so idiosyncratic really transpired, and the performances do a great job of selling the oddity of it all. Skarsgård, although he taps into Kiritsis’ wounded-animal nature and occasional snappiness, is a treat to watch in the moments he dials back and acts completely casually, as though trying to convince Hall he’s approachable despite holding a 12-gauge Winchester to his neck. Montgomery, meanwhile, eschews the usual charisma for which he’s cast and makes himself physically meek and small, embodying a sniveling desperation that, on occasion, makes Kiritsis’ grievances seem worth considering.
However, Van Sant never pushes Dead Man’s Wire in either of these two directions and instead lets it wallow in a casual middle ground. The unfolding action is never farcical enough to make the film satirical or outright funny, but it’s also never imbued with enough historical gravity to truly matter. Snapshot re-creations of known photos and news footage, and the presence of locally popular field reporters and radio hosts (played by Myha’la and Colman Domingo, respectively) seek to clarify the film’s reality, but these characters end up bit players in its opaque dramatic fabric rather than becoming living, breathing people crossing paths with an extraordinary, potentially violent scenario. The bigger picture, the moving pieces, and the various plans and strategies to save Hall never fade into view.
When it comes time for the standoff to end, the questions of how it’ll wrap up, who’ll survive, and which somewhat personable character will be forced to pull the trigger grant Dead Man’s Wire a temporary intensity. This last hurrah isn’t quite “too little too late,” but its rushed follow-through leaves the film’s mere 105 minutes feeling somewhat purposeless in the grand scheme of things. It’s a tale with no purpose beyond letting viewers know, with a bemused cadence, that something quirky once happened in Indianapolis and that it could’ve been much more destructive—and perhaps much more enrapturing—than it really was.
The season of Skarsgards continues with Dead Man’s Wire, a Gus Van Sant-directed dramedy based on a dark true story from 1977, which showcases a terrific performance by Bill Skarsgard (It) as a Luigi Mangione-like figure. The timely film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Princess of Wales Theatre on Sunday — having world premiered last week at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a rave from THR — and went over extremely well. It is still seeking U.S. distribution, but will surely soon find it, and when it does, assuming it is released this year, it could thrust Skarsgard into the thick of an Oscar race that already includes his father Stellan (for a supporting performance Neon’s Sentimental Value) and brother Alexander (for a supporting turn in A24’s Pillion).
Dead Man’s Wire, the first produced feature scripted by Austin Kolodney, centers on Tony Kiritzis, an Indianapolis man who poured his life savings into a real estate investment, the sale of which, he felt, was then deliberately sabotaged by his mortgage broker, thrusting him into a rage. He showed up at the office of the mortgage company, seeking its CEO M.L. Hall (Al Pacino), but, upon learning that the man was on vacation, met up with the man’s son Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), the company’s president, and took him hostage. Kiritzis connected a sawed-off shotgun to a wire that he placed around Hall’s neck, and, in full view of the police and media, transported him back to his own apartment, from which negotiations commenced. As twisted as Kiritzis’ behavior was, he became something of a folk hero after sharing his motives via interviews with a popular local DJ (Colman Domingo).
Watching the film, one cannot help but think of Sidney Lumet’s 1975 classic Dog Day Afternoon (underscored by the presence of Pacino in both films) and Mangione, the man who assassinated a health care executive in cold blood late last year but retained support from much of the public. Resentment of the rich by the poor dates back to the beginning of time, but it is clearly spiking at the moment, as evident in everything from the popularity of Donald Trump (ironically), Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to another 2025 film about the abduction of a powerful corporate titan, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia.
Dead Man’s Wire, which was shot in just 19 days, is clearly a low-budget film, so I imagine its asking price won’t be terribly high. A distributor who would like to have an instant best actor Oscar contender would be wise to snap it up. Van Sant, one of the great actors’ directors of his time, has directed several prior performances that went on to not only Oscar noms, but wins (Robin Williams in 1997’s Good Will Hunting and Sean Penn in 2008’s Milk), and he’s in fine form on this one.
