""Beware!" Udo Kier shouts at Madonna in German from behind the camera in the opening seconds of her music video for her 1992 song "Deeper and Deeper," black eyes wide against an onyx abyss, dispensing an almost philosophical wisdom from behind a pop sheen. "Our idols and demons will pursue us until we learn to let them go!" That dichotomy would follow Kier throughout a long career that was almost"
"Kier's own birth story feels like something out of one of his pictures, at least in part because Nazis are involved: Mere moments after he was born in October of 1944, the hospital where he was born was bombed by the Allies; he and his mother had to be rescued from the rubble. (His father had left the family long before Udo was born.)"
Udo Kier delivered memorable, provocative performances across nearly 250 roles spanning film, television, theater and video games. He often embodied a tension between glamour and menace, exemplified by his German warning and the line "Our idols and demons will pursue us until we learn to let them go." Kier's work traversed queer, camp, arthouse and mainstream contexts, making his eccentricity both visible and compelling. He survived a wartime bombing at his birth, spent youth with future director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, moved to London at 18 to learn English, was discovered for film in 1966, and achieved a major breakout with Paul Morrissey in 1973.
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