Entertainment Weekly Yearbook – Dec 2000
DIRK BOGARDE
He embodied European decadence in films like 1971’s Death in Venice, but earlier in his career, Dirk Bogarde’s charm earned him the nickname “the British Rock Hudson.” London-born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde played in thrillers and dramas as well as in farcical comedies (like 1954’s Doctor in the House), becoming the U.K.’s top box office star in the late ’50s. Bogarde, who died May 8 at age 78 of a heart attack, even helped launch Brigitte Bardot by choosing her for Doctor at Sea (1955). After trying Hollywood melodramas, the actor, discreetly gay in real life, became one of the first stars to play a homosexual character, a blackmailed lawyer, in the controversial British film Victim (1961). He later costarred with Julie Christie in 1965’s swingin’-London drama Darling: But it was his role as a dying composer sadly obsessed with a young boy in Death in Venice that Bogarde considered his peak, his finely aged allure exemplifying faded aristocracy. As he acted less and turned to writing best-selling memoirs like For the Time Being, Bogarde became a symbol of a time when courtliness was the norm. -JN
