Horst Buchholz

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Horst Buchholz
HorstBuchholz.jpg
Born Horst Werner Buchholz
(1933-12-04)4 December 1933
Berlin, Germany
Died 3 March 2003(2003-03-03) (aged 69)
Berlin, Germany
Years active 1952–2002
Spouse(s) Myriam Bru (m. 1958–2003)

Horst Werner Buchholz (4 December 1933 – 3 March 2003) was a German actor, remembered for The Magnificent Seven, in which he played the role of Chico,[1] and Nine Hours to Rama. He appeared in over sixty films during his acting career from 1952 to 2002.

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Life and work [edit]

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, whom his mother married in 1938.[2] In 1941, his half-sister, Heidi, was born. She gave him the nickname "Hotte" which he retained for the rest of his life.[2] 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 Teenage Wolfpack (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 Buchholz, became an actor and also produced a documentary about his father.

Buchholz' gravestone in Berlin

Horst Buchholz began appearing in foreign films from 1959 when he co-starred in the British production Tiger Bay with Hayley Mills. 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-television films 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 Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning Life Is Beautiful (1997).

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 Heerstrasse in Berlin.

Selected filmography [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ "Horst Buchholz will always be fondly remembered for playing Chico". Paul Page, quoted in Horst Buchholz biography. Accessed 1 May 2012
  2. ^ a b w:de:Horst Buchholz

External links [edit]

Authority control
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