Buchholz as he appears in the film The Magnificent Seven
Horst Buchholz, a famous German actor, was born on December 4th, 1933. He was born in Berlin, Germany into a middle class family. His father was a shoemaker and his mother was Danish. However, he was only with them for a short period of time before being put into a foster care home in Czechoslovakia when World War II began in Germany. As soon as the war was over, he made his way back to Berlin, leaving his childhood home in East Berlin in order to work in West Berlin. Though he was still in school, he managed to land his first role at the young age of fifteen in a Berlin production of Emil and the Detectives. Once he realized his talent, he dropped out of school and looked for work in more local productions. He was also known for his work in radio, and he began working behind the scenes on films as a voice-over actor when foreign films needed translated. He was able to speak five different languages, making him extraordinarily versatile. Eventually, he was discovered by a famous film director Julien Duviver, who gave him his first movie role in the 1955 movie, Marianne de ma Jeunesse. The very next year, he won an award at Cannes for Best Actor for his role in Himmel ohne Sterne, directed by Helmut Kautner. In 1958, he married a French actress named Myriam Bru and they had two kids; a son and a daughter. He began appearing in English-language films in 1959 and moved to the United States in order to work in Los Angeles to be closer to Hollywood and the industry he was quickly advancing in. However, he began turning down key roles that would have quickly advanced his stardom. Due to this, his popularity declined after the 60s and he took up many smaller roles. His last film appearance was in Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful. On March 3rd, 2003, he died suddenly of pneumonia that developed while he was recovering from an operation in the hospital. He is buried in the Friedhof Heerstrache and has been immortalized by his son, Christopher, in a documentary entitled Horst Buchholz…Mein Papa.
Horst’s didn’t know who his Biological Father was. I suspect he was an American Soldier in WWII, (will see if it’s mentioned in his Son’s biographical documentary). Reason why I speculate is because he was friends and traveled to the U.S. with my Brother In-Law and his Father was an American WWII Soldier who abandoned his Mother.