Helmut Berger, Austrian actor who rose to fame as the muse and lover of Luchino Visconti – obituary
msn.comElizabeth Taylor’s middle-aged married woman after she has full-body plastic surgery. In Joseph Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman (1975) he was Glenda Jackson’s paramour, while in Tinto Brass’s X-rated “erotic-war-drama” Salon Kitty (1976), he played a Nazi SS commandant who recruits a group of female SS auxiliaries in order to plant them as prostitutes in a high-class brothel to collect intelligence on patrons of the establishment.
After Visconti’s death, Berger’s acting career dwindled to mainly small roles. In the mid-1980s he played Peter De Vilbis, Fallon Carrington’s fiancé, in nine episodes of the US TV soap Dynasty. “I did it as a favour to Joan Collins, but I had a nervous breakdown during it,” he explained.
In 1990 he was a corrupt Vatican accountant in The Godfather Part III and in 1993 he reprised his role as the mad king of Bavaria in Donatello and Fosco Dubini’s Ludwig 1881.
In Bertrand Bonello’s 2014 epic biopic Saint Laurent, he played the great fashion icon in old age. But Berger won as many column inches for what his agent euphemistically described as his “dolce vita”.
Read more on msn.com