He is one of Germany's most famous actors: Mario Adorf. He celebrates his 90th birthday on September 8th.
No, you can't say that you can't tell his age. He's just an older man with friendly, alert eyes and an innocent smile. This is by no means a matter of course, because old age can also show suspicious and dismissive traits, especially if it is not accepted.
With him, on the other hand, you can see a cheerful, sovereign serenity at first glance. He could be a little over 80, maybe even 85 and over. Mario Adorf embodies the beautiful face of old age almost ideally, and therefore also its timeless. He celebrates his 90th birthday on Tuesday.
Mario Adorf was born in Zurich in 1930
In his home country it has been said for weeks: "Haste jehürt, oose Mario would be 90 years old, on September 8th he will have a jeburtsdaach". This gives a first indication of his origin, especially since a slight Rhenish accent can be made out in his language. A look at his biography reveals that he is actually Swiss, because he was born in Zurich in 1930, but his origins go back to Caspar Adorf, his grandfather. He was a master saddler in the small town of Mayen in the Eifel (today approx. 19,000 inhabitants) and emigrated to Switzerland towards the end of the 19th century. He married an Alsatian and had four children with her.
His daughter Alice Adorf worked as an X-ray assistant in southern Italy and returned to Zurich from Calabria in 1930 – pregnant with Mario. Father was the doctor Matteo Menniti, who was unfortunately already married. So the child was born out of wedlock. In the same year Alice Adorf was deported to Germany with her son Mario as an "unwanted foreigner". She went back to Mayen.
The small town has shaped him, because childhood and youth were tough. The mother toiled as a seamstress, the money was so scarce that she had to give her child to the orphanage for a while so that it had something to eat. He made his way anyway. Abitur, general studies at the University of Mainz (philosophy, psychology, criminology. Literature, music history, theater studies), later in Zurich.
Over 200 films in 60 years
He set out from Mayen and conquered the world. Over 200 films in over 60 years, a celebrity in Italy, France, England, Germany, Austria and Switzerland anyway. An actor of the century. He doesn't particularly like to hear that. And "world star" not at all. "I don't see myself as a world star. World stars only come from Hollywood," he told the "Kölner Stadtanzeiger". "But I haven't been able to establish myself in Hollywood. Even the most famous European actors like Marcello Mastroianni or Gérard Depardieu didn't become world stars."
Hollywood had called in 1964. Director Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) needed someone who looked like a Mexican for his western "Major Dundee" with stars like Charlton Heston (1923-2008) and Senta Berger (79). The film wasn't particularly successful. Nevertheless, he was suggested "to stay in America and continue to play Mexicans there," he told "Spiegel". "In Germany and Italy I had much nicer offers. I didn't want to go to parties in Hollywood to get to know important people."
He has made commercial cinema, primarily in the role of the villain and big films such as "Deadlock" (1970) "," The lost honor of Katharina Blum "(1975)," Bomber & Paganini "(1976).
He shot with Claudia Cardinale and Sean Connery ("The Red Tent", 1969), with Alec Guinness ("Smileys People – Agent in Their Own Cause", 1982) or with Michael Caine ("The 4 1/2 Billion Contract", 1985 ). And with the German production "Die Blechtrommel" (1979) he even returned triumphantly to Hollywood, where the film adaptation of Grass by director Volker Schlöndorff won the Oscar for best foreign language film.
Career as a film and series star
He became a series star in legendary TV series such as "Der große Bellheim", "Der Schattenmann" and "Die Affäre Semmeling" by the director Dieter Wedel (80). This friendship broke up in 2003 at the Worms Nibelungen Festival, when Wedel became artistic director and Adorf announced angrily in the "Bild am Sonntag": "I will never work with him again. I will never forgive Wedel."
His wonderful roles in cult films by Helmut Dietl such as "Rossini – or the murderous question of who slept with whom" and "Kir Royal", where he as a publicity-horny entrepreneur Heinrich Hafferloher threatened the gossip reporter Baby Schimmerlos, are unforgettable wat from to with my Jeld! "
He regrets one of his greatest roles to this day
But of all things he regrets the film that started it all. In 1957 he played the alleged murderer of women Bruno Lüdke, who was blamed for 53 murders and three attempted murders in 1943 in "Nachts bei der Teufel Came". For this Adorf received the Federal Film Prize for the best young actor. In the 1990s it turned out that Lüdke was innocent. Nazi police officers had declared the mentally handicapped man a murderer for ideological reasons. He died in custody in 1944, presumably during "medical examinations of a born criminal".
"With my role I gave a man the image of a mass murderer who wasn't," he told Die Zeit. "As an actor, I wronged this Bruno Lüdke … I gave a person who really lived a monstrous story that wasn't true at all." He felt guilty about this victim and his relatives.
The actor likes to speak plain language
You seldom hear such sentences from an actor. Mario Adorf, on the other hand, likes to speak plain language. He thinks that many mistakes are made in Germany in the foreigner debate. In Cicero magazine, he said: "People still pretend that immigrants have to fully integrate or even assimilate, or get out with them!" The people do not necessarily have to be assimilated, rather the German society must also adapt. In the past, this has also been achieved with Italians and Poles. And he thinks "the development of the populist parties is dramatic. That worries me. I left Italy in 2004 because of Berlusconi."
Mario Adorf, born in Zurich, father Italian, mother German, wife French, is a staunch "supporter of Europe and of the opinion that we have to do everything we can to preserve it". He sees his home in the small Eiffel town of Mayen, not in Rome, where he has lived for over 40 years, not in Paris or Saint Tropez, where he has residence, not in Munich, where he lives. Home is just where you grew up, where you chattered your first words. He is a "grateful" honorary citizen in Mayen, and the "Mario-Adorf-Burgweg" was named after him.
He celebrated his 80th birthday in Mayen, and he will celebrate his 90th "in view of the Corona crisis in the smallest of circles," he told the German press agency. With Monique (76), his second wife since 1985. The two have been together for 55 years. The writer Mario Adorf (nine books) finds touching words for this love in the magazine "Bunte": "For me it was the recognition of a person who interested me, where I said that it brings cheerfulness into my bear life, it brings me to Laugh." And: "I love to see my wife age with me. I see this process with a lot of tenderness and affection."