Helmut Berger, a fetish actor for Luchino Visconti and a star of European cinema from the 1960s and 1970s, has died today at the age of 78 in Salzburg, according to his agent. The Austrian interpreter, considered one of the most handsome men in the world, participated in films such as The Fall of the Gods, Ludwig or The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Born in 1944, Berger was called to dedicate himself to his family’s hospitality business, but he soon branched out to try to be an actor. He traveled to London and Italy where he met Visconti. Actor and director entered into a loving relationship and by the hand of the Italian filmmaker, Berger made his film debut in an episodic film, The Witches (1967). Visconti directed the chapter The Witch Burned Alive starring Silvana Mangano.

After participating in a couple of Italian titles, I giovani tigri (Antonio Leonviola, 1968) and Sai cosa faceva Stalin alle donne? (Maurizio Liverani, 1969), Berger stood out as an interpreter, again under Visconti’s orders, in the controversial The Fall of the Gods (1969). Dirk Bogarde and Ingrid Thulin led the cast of this film about a family of German industrialists who must decide how to face the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933. The role of Berger, a young incestuous pedophile, who appeared dressed as a woman at the beginning of the film, served to pay off the controversy.

He stood out in his next work, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Massimo Dallamano, 1970) where he gave life to the handsome young man who sells his soul to preserve his beauty according to the Oscar Wilde novel. And he participated in The Garden of the Finzi Contini (1971), this time under the baton of Vittorio De Sica, who brought to the cinema the novel by Giorgio Bassani whose theme had a lot to do with that of The Fall of the Gods. In this case it was a wealthy family of Italian Jews who had to deal with anti-Semitic laws in the late 1930s.

Berger’s career was consolidated in 1973 with his role as Louis II of Bavaria in Ludwig, again directed by Visconti. The actor played the Mad King, who led Bavaria into a disastrous war. The film demystified the figure of Sissi, the Empress, who was given life as always by Romy Schneider, but with an image far removed from the one presented by the sweetened series of Austrian films of the 50s.

Visconti cast Burt Lancaster in Confidencias (1974), where Berger played his neighbor, the young lover of a marquise. The director died in 1975 and Berger fell into a deep depression, felt like “Visconti’s widower” and even attempted suicide. Berger’s personal life was not a bed of roses. In 2015 he published his memoir, Self-portrait. 70th anniversary, where he confessed to being bisexual, a cocaine addict and an alcoholic.

“Perhaps it was the alcohol’s fault, but my relationships with women were always complicated. They fascinate me, but they are very possessive. They want to get married and have children. All that scene of tenderness paralyzes me,” Berger said in the book where he recounted that he had a relationship with actress Marisa Berenson. He also had an affair with the dancer Rudolf Nureyev and in 1994 he married another actress, Francesca Guidato, from whom he separated 15 years later.

Although most of his career took place in Europe and mainly in Italy, in 1973, the actor shared the bill with Elizabeth Taylor and Henry Fonda in an American production shot in Switzerland, Ash Wednesday (Larry Peerce). He also worked under the orders of Joseph Losey in the British film A Romantic Englishwoman (1975) where he formed a trio with Glenda Jackson and Michael Caine and made his foray into French television as a white-collar thief and directed by Claude Chabrol in the Fantômas miniseries (1980).

At the beginning of the 80s, he joined the cast of Victoria, the trilogy by Antoni Ribas about the history of Catalonia at the beginning of the 20th century, which also included Xabier Elorriaga and Carme Elías in the cast. He went through the famous American series Dynasty and had a role in The Godfather III, the film that closed another trilogy, perhaps the most famous in the history of cinema, with the seal of the great Francis Ford Coppola.

Berger did not move away from cinema in his maturity and was working until 2019, when he shot Liberté, his last film, directed by Albert Serra. He died today “peacefully but surprisingly,” according to his agent.