German actor Mario Adorf was a phenomenon. On screen, he beat, shot and murdered people. He was loud, rude and used foul language. And yet, ultimately, he was loved by everyone.
Many other actors have also been around for a long time, but who else can claim to have been as much a part of post-war German cinema as he was of the inspiring works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff’s New German Cinema movement?
Who else can look back on a cinematic vita that includes Italian Spaghetti Westerns as well as classic mafia films, working with Hollywood directors as well as major European filmmakers?
Even as an adult, Adorf still acted in films.
landing in hollywood
Born on September 8, 1930 in the Swiss capital Zurich to a German mother and an Italian father, Adorf grew up in the mountainous rural Eifel region of western Germany. His mother Alice Adorf was an X-ray assistant, and his father Matteo Mainetti was a surgeon.
Mario Adorf studied criminology, but dropped out to begin acting for the theater before moving into film.
In 1957 he played a murderer who had returned from Hollywood in “The Devil Strikes at Night”, directed by Robert Siodmak. The role was Adorf’s breakthrough, but it also meant that he was initially seen as an actor playing villains, bad guys, creeps and gunslingers.
And he loved playing bad guys. Adorf said early in his career, “In itself, the villain is an interesting role in a book. I don’t like villains as people, as characters, but I know their importance, so I’m happy to give them my body, my face.”
He was completely surprised when in 1963 audiences were outraged that he had shot the father and sister of Winneto, a fictional American Indian character favored by the Germans, in the bad guy role.
This increased his popularity and from then on it was not difficult to play the bad guy in many Spaghetti Westerns. He established roots in Italy at that time and was also cast in several major Italian mafia films.
Back to ‘New German Cinema’
He returned to Germany to work with a new generation of filmmakers, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff – on “Lola,” “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum” and “The Tin Drum,” the 1979 Oscar-winning film adaptation of Günter Grass’s novel of the same title.
After moving to Hollywood, Adorf got a role in Sam Peckinpah’s Western film “Major Dundee”, but in the end his character was almost completely cut from the film.
European filmmakers also liked him and he worked with directors such as Claude Chabrol, Damiano Damiani and Billy Wilder.
The actor also made films for German TV. Many Germans will remember Adorf for his roles in the famous TV productions “Kir Royal” and “Der grosse Belheim”.
When asked about his multilingual origins, he once replied that he didn’t really like the word European. “I have a little objection to the fact that it’s so easy to call it European,” said the actor, who was born in Switzerland, grew up in Germany and lives in Italy with his French wife. Adorf said at the time, “If it were that easy, Europe would have got there a long time ago, but it is certainly not that easy.”
Attachment to one’s childhood hometown
In the last decades he spent much time at his home in Saint Tropez in southern France, but the Eifel region in western Germany also remained close to his heart. This is where he grew up. He often stayed in his hometown of Mayenne, from where he was granted honorary citizenship. Traces of the Eifel dialect were noticeable in their way of speaking for a long time after living there.
Mario Adorf has won almost every award in film and television.
His roles in recent years have reflected his career, from a three-part German TV film about Winnenow to a Mafia film in 2019. Adorf remained true to his subjects even in old age.
The actor was undoubtedly a star and for decades, he was one of the outstanding actors in European film and television.
But the term “movie star” never suited the likeable and polite Mario Adorf, who died after a short illness at the age of 95 on April 8, 2026, at his home in Paris.
This article was originally published in German.