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Dirk Bogarde

Dirk Bogarde

1984: President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

1985: Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

1995: Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#78).

A British soldier during WW II, he was present when the Allies rescued the prisoners from the Nazi death camp at Belsen.

According to his friend Charlotte Rampling, Bogarde was approached in 1990 by Madonna to appear in her video for "Justify My Love", citing The Night Porter (1974) as an inspiration. Bogarde turned the offer down.



Befriended Rock Hudson while filming Campbell's Kingdom (1957), while Hudson was filming A Farewell to Arms (1957).

Beginning in 1977, Bogarde was also a prolific writer with seven volumes of autobiography and seven novels all becoming best-sellers.

Born at 3:20am-UT

Born Derek van den Bogaerde in the north London suburb of Hampstead to an actress mother and an artist father, he went to university in London and Scotland.

Considered retiring after The Night Porter (1974), which had left him emotionally drained.

Director Joseph Losey originally offered the part of Leon Trotsky in his film The Assassination of Trotsky (1972) to Bogarde. Losey admitted that the script was terrible, but told Bogarde that it would be revised. Bogarde turned the role down, embittering Losey, who felt that Bogarde didn't trust him. Richard Burton, who had worked with Losey on Boom! (1968), did trust Losey enough to take the part, even though he was shown the same script. Bogarde was wise to turn down the part as the finished film was a critical and box office failure, and along with the earlier Losey-Burton collaboration Boom! (1968) made the list of the "Fifty Worst Films of All Time", by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.

During the late 1940s Bogarde was living at No 44 Chester Row, Belgravia, London with a rescued cat called Cliff. While he was there Bogarde received his first contract from J. Arthur Rank, which set him on the way to stardom.

Following the death of his partner Anthony Forwood in 1988, he moved into an apartment at 2 Cadogan Gardens in London, where he remained until his death.

For a time in the 1950s, Bogarde was promoted as "The British Rock Hudson", despite the fact that he was actually Dutch and stood considerably shorter than the 6'4" American star.

Going to the wrong room for a British Broadcasting Corporation audition, the young Bogarde accidentally got a part in a stage play that proved so successful he was hailed as a star overnight.

He had a remarkably good singing voice.

He made his stage debut in 1939, but his acting career was interrupted for seven years by World War II until he was demobilized in September 1946.

He moved to Europe in the late 1960s, when he saw his career path lay in the sort of films being produced in Italy, France and Germany, rather than England or America. He lived in France some 20 years, thus fulfilling a childhood ambition.

He was a close friend of Rex Harrison, whom he named as the actor who had influenced him most in a 1963 interview with the BBC. In 1958 Bogarde provided a video message praising Harrison when the musical "My Fair Lady" transferred from Broadway to London.

He was awarded a Chevalier De L'Ordre Des Lettres from the French Government in 1982.

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