Oskar Werner

The Deserter Who Didn't Want to Be a Star

Oskar Werner was not an easy actor to tame. By 1941 he was already part of the Burgtheater in Vienna, and his talent was as obvious as his arrogance. But the war changed everything before he could enjoy the stage.

World War II forced him to wear the uniform of the Wehrmacht. Werner was a committed pacifist who detested Nazism to his core. He feigned chronic deafness so he wouldn't have to fire a weapon and ended up deserting in 1945.

He hid in a forest with his family until the horror was over.

That experience forged a reclusive character and an almost suicidal professional ethic. In 1951 he signed a contract with Fox in Hollywood, but it didn't last long. He couldn't stand studios deciding which scripts he should read and what clothes he should wear for promotional photos.

So he returned to Europe to work with the best without selling his soul to the studio system. François Truffaut discovered him years later and was fascinated by his air of intellectual fragility. In 1962 he starred in Jules et Jim, and international audiences discovered an actor who didn't need to shout to dominate the screen.

The Silent War Against Truffaut

Her connection to French cinema was both her greatest glory and her professional downfall. In 1965, she received an Oscar nomination for Ship of Fools and it seemed the world was at her feet. But Werner despised the glitter of galas and preferred to retreat to her home in Liechtenstein with a bottle of wine.

The shoot of Fahrenheit 451 in 1966 destroyed his friendship with Truffaut for good. Werner decided to sabotage his own performance by cutting his hair halfway through production to disrupt scene continuity. He wanted to oppose the director at every shot.

His ego won out over friendship.

That conflict left a permanent mark on him. Directors began to fear his fits of rage and his excessive demands over the script. For him, theater was a religion and film was a chore he often found vulgar.

In 1970 he founded his own theater festival in Wachau. It was a personal gamble that ended in an absolute financial disaster, because no one wanted to work with a man who treated his fellow actors as if they were amateurs. The industry systematically turned its back on him.

The Years of Silence and Alcohol

His final years were a downward spiral of failed projects and poetry readings in half-empty halls. He turned down roles in major productions because the scripts didn't meet his moral or artistic standards. In 1975 he accepted a supporting role in an episode of the series Columbo titled Playback.

It was his last notable appearance on the small screen.

The press of the time talked about his physical decline and how alcohol had hardened his features. In 1983 he tried to organize a tribute to Mozart in Vienna that ended in an embarrassing cancellation. There was no trace left of the blond young man who had captivated critics in the sixties.

On October 23, 1984, he suffered a heart attack at a hotel in Marburg while preparing for a public reading. He was 61 years old. His body was buried in the small cemetery of Triesen in Liechtenstein under a simple headstone that makes no mention of his films.