04/03/2003 - Dead at 69. Buchholz's dark and brooding good looks earned him the nickname of the "German James Dean" and an international career that included Benigni's Life is Beautiful

German cinema is mourning the death of popular actor Horst Buchholz who passed away on 3 March in a Berlin hospital at the age of 69. Buchholz was born in Berlin on 4 December 1933 and, with Hardy Kruger, is probably the only German actor of his generation with a strong international profile.
He made his uncredited acting debut in 1952 but it wasn’t until 1955 when he appeared in Helmut Kautner’s Sky Without Stars that he came to the forefront of international attention at the 1956 Cannes film festival. He followed this up with a starring role in Georg Tressler’s Die Halbstarken – The Hooligans, a German take on Rebel Without A Cause , that Buchholz’s dark and brooding good looks won him the nickname of the “German James Dean”. In his long and illustrious career Buchholz appeared in over 100 films, 30 of which international. The titles include The Confessions of Felix Krull based on the novel by Thomas Mann (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), La noia (1963) by Italy’s Damiano Damiani and Life is Beautiful (1997) by Roberto Benigni.