His life, however, almost ended before it began. He was born Udo Kierspe in Cologne on October 14, 1944, in a hospital that was bombed by the Allies hours later; both the newborn and his mother Thekla had to be pulled from the rubble. (Kier never met his father.) After modelling in his teens, Kier moved to London to study English; there, his limpid blue eyes were spotted by the director Mike Sarne, who cast Kier as a gigolo in his short Road to Saint Tropez (1966).
His international breakthrough came with a pair of films made under the Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey aegis. As the crazed scientist in the knowingly garish, 3D-enhanced Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), Kier ventured one of cinema’s most forceful line readings (“To know death, Otto, you have to f**k life in the gallbladder!”); he pushed harder still for Blood for Dracula (1974), losing ten pounds in a week to play the prissy Count. On the first day of shooting, Kier was too weak to stand; he elected to play his scenes in a wheelchair.
Hopes of a serious acting career were partially dashed when the production shot under the poetic title Love is a River in Russia arrived in Cannes heavily recut and retitled Spermula (1976), but Kier was soon adopted by directors with vision and some idea of how best to deploy the bug-eyed madness he embodied: he played an ominous psychologist in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) and became a go-to for Rainer Werner Fassbinder between The Third Generation (1979) and Lola (1981).
The actor had befriended Fassbinder as a teenager; the pair even briefly cohabited, although Kier soon retreated from the director’s speedfreak lifestyle and punishing work ethic: “I moved out because he was burning himself up in such a destructive way. I didn’t want to be part of it. He threw my suitcases down the stairs because he wanted to say that he’d thrown me out. He died two months later.”
He worked steadily in Germany through the 1980s, attempting a pop career with the 1985 single “Der Adler” and playing Hitler in the queasily comic The Fuhrer’s Last Hour (1989). By then, however, he’d encountered the ambitious young Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, who asked Kier to retell his origin story in Epidemic (1987), then cast the actor in his made-for-TV Medea (1988) and Europa (1991).
Relocating to California in 1991, Kier revived an American career that was as curious as anything else in his filmography. He leered in photos for Madonna’s scandalous 1992 book Sex and raved in the singer’s “Deeper and Deeper” promo; he played an eccentric billionaire opposite Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1993); he was unwigged by Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire (1996) and played a NASA psychologist in the Bruce Willis blockbuster Armageddon (1998).
Von Trier remained a fan, casting the actor in his career-making provocations: the visual highlight was the outsized baby Kier played in the surreal soap The Kingdom (Riget, 1994-2022), though he was also memorable as the wedding planner undone by the Apocalypse in Melancholia (2011). (The two became firm friends: Kier was also the godfather of Von Trier’s daughter Agnes.)
In the new millennium, he cropped up in films by Argento (Mother of Tears, 2007), Werner Herzog (Invincible, 2001 and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, 2009) and Guy Maddin (Keyhole, 2011); after voicing the scheming parrot Professor Pericles in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010-13), he extracted a love rival’s eyeballs with a spoon in the grim WW2 drama The Painted Bird (2019).
In his final years, Kier earned an Independent Spirit nomination for his turn as a devoted hairdresser in Swan Song (2021); he played Hitler again in the short-lived streaming series Hunters (2023); for the Brazilian critic-turned-director Kleber Mendonça Filho, he appeared in the latter-day Western Bacurau (2019) and the upcoming The Secret Agent (2025). In recent months, he’d been voicing a character for Hideo Kojima’s much-anticipated videogame O.D. (2026 tbc).
“I’m an aesthetic person who loves beauty,” Kier told The Guardian in 2002. “When I’m in London, I go to Leicester Square and visit the French church [Notre Dame de France] to see Jean Cocteau’s beautiful altar. I buy two candles, one for my dead friends and one for my living friends, and I go out in a good mood. Then I go and play the Antichrist.”
He is survived by his long-time partner, the artist Delbert McBride.
Udo Kier, born October 14, 1944, died November 23, 2025.
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