Trivia

Wrote several bestselling books like "Der Mäusetöter" (The Mice Killer, 1992) or "Der Dieb von Trastevere" (The Thief of Trastevere, 1995). In 2005, he published "Mit Einer Nadel Bloß" (With just one needle), which focuses on his mother's life.

Refused to play parts in One, Two, Three (1961) and The Godfather (1972), which he regrets to this day.

His father was an Italian surgeon, his mother a German nurse.

Lived together with Monique Monique Faye since 1968, before marrying her in1985.

Was raised in Mayen/Eifel, Germany.

Started a singing career with his solo program "Al Dente" (1994).

Ranked #2 in a survey by Unsere Besten (2003) searching Germany's all-time favorite actors (24 November 2006).

Received Germany's Great Cross of Merit in 2001.

Mario Adorf was attached to play Ashriel in Grigorij Richters's Dean's Life in 2004. He dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.

Though he's starred in many Italian films, he's almost always dubbed into the language by another actor.

Studied acting at the Otto-Falckenberg-Schule in Munich from 1953 to 1955.

Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival in 2007.

He has an entry in Jean Tulard's "Dictionnaire du Cinéma/Les Acteurs", published in Paris in 2007 (pgs 12 and 13).

Appeared in two 1970s Italian crime films that influenced Quentin Tarantino's first two movies: Caliber 9 influenced a fight/beating scene in Reservoir Dogs, and The Italian Connection influenced the two black and white gangsters for Pulp Fiction.

In 2003, Adorf was one of the founding members of the German Film Academy.

Former brother-in-law of director Michael Verhoeven.

Mario Adorf was a German actor, audiobook and radio play narrator, voice actor, and author. He had his breakthrough in 1957 with the crime film "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" (At Night, When the Devil Came) in the role of Bruno Lüdke, who was declared a serial killer by the National Socialists.

When asked about his identity, Adorf replied that he felt "half Italian." He had been drawn to the south and had "always wanted to be Italian." But then he realized that everything that interested him about Italy, especially the art, was not an Italian, but a German way of life.

Adorf performed at the Munich Kammerspiele from 1954 and had a permanent engagement there from 1955 to 1962.

He played a small role in the 1982 BBC adaptation of John le Carré's Smiley's People as a German club owner.

His acting repertoire was mostly expressed in characters ranging from rough-and-tumble servants and crooks to elegant mafiosi or signori, but Adorf was also able to demonstrate his comedic talent in several productions.

Adorf also occassionally worked as a voice actor. In 1996, he provided the German dubbing voice for the character Draco in Dragonheart, a role performed by Sean Connery.

When he was three years old, his mother placed him in the local orphanage run by the Sisters of Mercy of St. Borromeo, as she lacked money and living space. At the beginning of the Second World War, the orphanage was closed, and Adorf returned to his mother.

His mother was expelled from Switzerland three months after Mario's birth and moved to Mayen in the Eifel region, where her father came from and where she had lived as a child.

After graduating from high school, he studied humanities (philosophy, psychology, criminology, literary studies, historical musicology, theatre studies) at the University of Mainz from 1950 onwards. In his free time, he was active in a student boxing team and on a student theatre, where he gained his first acting experience.

In an early - aborted and unreleased - version of Werner Herzog's film epic Fitzcarraldo, Adorf played a leading role alongside Jason Robards and Mick Jagger in 1981.

Adorf worked with directors including Volker Schlöndorff, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Corbucci, and Claude Chabrol.

During New German Cinema, he worked with Volker Schlöndorff on The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975) and The Tin Drum (1979). In the latter film, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, he portrayed the role of family father Alfred Matzerath.

In 1953, Adorf moved to Zurich to continue his studies and worked there as an extra and assistant director at the Schauspielhaus. He broke off his studies and began acting training at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich.

Mario Adorf turned down the role of General Mapache in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), because he felt the character was too violent. He had previously appeared in Peckinpah's Major Dundee (1965) as an American sergeant alongside Charlton Heston.

He was long typecast in villainous roles. In Winnetou Part 1, he played Winnetou's evil antagonist Santer, who shot Winnetou's sister Nscho-tschi (Marie Versini). In a 2013 interview, Adorf explained that people still approach him about this role and say they haven't forgiven him for this on-screen deed.

In 2022 he received the European Culture Prize for his life's work, and in 2024 the German Television Award: Honorary Prize for Life's Work.

Since 2009, Adorf has been active as an "ambassador for good hearing," working to destigmatize people with hearing loss. Together with a hearing aid manufacturer, he promoted a positive approach to hearing aids and raised awareness about the early detection and correction of hearing impairments.

Father of Stella Adorf (born 1963).