Mario Adorf, the German-Italian actor who achieved legendary status in Europe by playing charismatic baddies in crime thrillers, spaghetti Westerns and dramas like the Oscar winner The Tin Drum, has died. He was 95.
Adorf, whose decades-long career stretched across genres and cinematic eras, died Wednesday at his home in Paris after a short illness, his agent announced.
His breakthrough came with a turn as a Nazi-era serial killer in Robert Siodmak’s Oscar-nominated thriller The Devil Strikes at Night (1957), and he would become a favorite of the directors of the New German Cinema movement of the 1960s and ’70s.
He portrayed the father of Oscar Matzerath in Volker Schlöndorff‘s The Tin Drum (1979) and had supporting roles in Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s Lola (1981).
The Tin Drum won the Palme d’Or in Cannes (tying with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now) and then the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. It was a step up for Adorf, who had cut his teeth as a heavy in 1960s spaghetti Westerns and Italian mafia movies.
In Germany, he is perhaps best known for his sinister turn as the black-hatted cowboy who kills the Apache hero’s family in Winnetou (1963), a Euro Western shot in then-Yugoslavia that enjoys cult status to this day.
Born in Switzerland as the illegitimate child of an Italian surgeon and a German medical assistant, Adorf was raised by his mother in Germany. He initially studied criminology before dropping out to pursue his acting career.
Blessed with a devilish charm and movie-idol looks, Adorf was popular with directors across Europe, working with the likes of Claude Chabrol, Damiano Damiani and Billy Wilder.
He nearly always played bad guys. “The villain is the [most] interesting role,” he said in an interview early in his career. “I don’t love the villains as people, as characters, but I know their significance, so I’m happy to lend them my body, my face.”
Adorf made a few unfortunate career choices, turning down work in Wilder’s One, Two, Three (1961), Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) and Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). His first part in a major Hollywood film, Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1965), ended up mostly on the cutting room floor.
However, he did work with Wilder on Fedora (1978) and had a handful of supporting roles in some big international productions, including a 1982 BBC adaptation of John le Carré‘s Smiley’s People and Bille August’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997).
Adorf also was a regular on German TV and enjoyed a string of hits in the ’90s and early 2000s alongside director Dieter Wedel, including 1992’s Der grosse Bellheim, 1995’s Der Schattenmann and 2002’s Die Affäre Semmeling.
His turn as a foul-mouthed glue magnate determined to bribe a society reporter to get his name in the tabloids in Helmut Dietl’s 1985 satirical TV show Kir Royal was a high-water mark.
Adorf was highly lauded in his home country, winning five best actor honors at the German Film Awards and a lifetime achievement prize in 2004. The Locarno film festival gave him its career achievement award in 2016, and he worked well into his 90s, with his final role coming in Ahmet Tas’ Real Fight (2023).
