Helmut Berger, ‘the most beautiful man in the world’ and icon of European cinema of the 60s and 70s, dies

Helmut Berger lived as a character created by Luchino Visconti would have done, surrounded by excess, hedonism, ups and downs. Born in 1944 into a wealthy Austrian family, he ran away from his Marist boarding school as a teenager and went to live in London. It was the 60s and with sporadic jobs as a model, a small-time actor (or whatever) he squeezed the night out of the city to the fullest.

At the age of 20 he met Visconti, who was 38 years older than him at the time. They immediately became lovers and from that moment the director guided their career, and their life. With him he worked on iconic films, becoming an erotic myth for men and women. They worked together on ‘The Witches’ (1967), but stardom came with ‘The Fall of the Gods’ (1969), where he played a perverse pedophile Nazi who cross-dressed as Merlene Diatricth and which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. An icon of European cinema of the time was born then, working repeatedly with the Italian filmmaker on ‘Louis II of Bavaria’ ( 1973) and ‘Confidences’ (1974). She also shot ‘The Garden of the Finzi-Contini’ (1970) with Vittorio de Sica, with Massimo Dellamano in ‘The picture of Dorian Gray’ (1970). He was also part of major Hollywood productions such as ‘Ash Wednesday’, (Larry Pierce, 1973) along with Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda and Burt Lancaster.

As he grew as a star, he also became a myth of social life chaining excesses with drugs, monumental drunkenness and sentimental scandals, already wearing the label of the most handsome man in the world that the magazines placed. He competed in this with Alain Delon, and much more. He himself recounted in his biography how he had slept with his then partner, Romy Schneider, and later with his wife, Nathalie Barthélemy. In his autobiography, entitled ‘Yo Berger’ published in 1998, he acknowledged having had sexual relations with dozens of celebrities of the time, including Rudolf Nureyev, Ursula Andress, Bianca and Mick Jagger or Jerry Hall.

a life of excess

The death in 1978 of Luchino Visconti, with whom he had a long and stormy relationship, left him devastated. He always considered himself his widower and in the following years he had suicide attempts and an extreme drift with alcohol and drugs that weighed down his acting career.

During the 80’s he collaborated with his Spanish directors: Antoni Ribas in the trilogy ‘Victoria! (1983) and Jesús Franco in ‘Night predators’ (1988). Later Francis Ford Coppola rescued him as one of the corrupt bankers in ‘The Godfather III’ (1990) and Bertrand Bonello turned it into ‘Saint Laurent’ (2014) in the most decadent and aged version of the French couturier. At that time he came to participate in a reality show on German television similar to ‘Survivors’.

the filmmaker Albert Serra he counted on him for the theatrical production ‘Liberté’ that he did in Berlin in 2018. The following year he was part of the cast when he took this text to the cinema. ‘Liberté’ (2019) It was the last work of Helmut Berger. According to his representative when announcing his death, at age 79, the actor admitted: “I have lived three lives in four languages (He spoke German, English, French and Italian). I do not regret anything”.