He died at 4 a.m. in Salzburg. Austrian actor Helmut Berger has passed away 'unexpectedly' on the eve of his 79th birthday, according to German press reports. She was one of the great stars of European cinema of the 60s and 70s.

The Austrian actor and model was launched into the world of cinema by Luchino Visconti, with whom he had a long sentimental bond until the director's death in 1976.

For Visconti, who discovered and launched him, Berger played some of the most iconic roles of his film career: 'Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa' (1964) (on the set of which they met) and the so-called German trilogy consisting of 'The Fall of the Gods' (1969), 'Death in Venice' (1971) and 'Ludwig' (1973). Berger acted with actors such as Romy Schneider, Elisabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda and Burt Lancaster.

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Helmut Berger in Los Angeles, 1983

Helmut Berger, pseudonym of Helmut Stein Berger, was born in Bad Ischl (Salzburg) on 29 May 1944 into a family of hoteliers. At 18 he moved to London, where he began posing as a model, then moved to Rome. The meeting with Visconti was decisive but also left a great void when the director died at the age of 70 in 1976.

The actor went through a long period of depression and his career never returned to the heights reached with Visconti. But the roles offered by important directors were not lacking: in 1990 Francis Ford Coppola cast him for The Godfather III in the role of Keinszig, a powerful Swiss banker; Claude Chabrol wanted him in the television adaptation of the novel Fantomas; in 1992 Madonna called him for the music video of Erotica; in 2014 he is in the cast of the film French 'Yves Saint Laurent', directed by Bertrand Bonello, in which he plays the acclaimed designer French, in his last years of life.

In 2015 he had discussed at the Venice Film Festival the documentary 'Helmut Berger, Actor' by Andreas Horvath that filmed him in his run-down house on the outskirts of Salzburg, between drugs and empty vodka bottles, in a state often of alteration between angry screams and various obscenities.

In November 2019, after a series of health problems, he announced the end of his film career.

The actor's agent said he has always lived in the style of the "Dolce Vita". Then he recalled the words spoken by Berger many years ago: "I have lived three lives, speaking in four languages. I don't mimic anything."