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Hitler actor, who went viral in memes, dies

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Bruno Ganz
Bruno Ganz

Cape Town - Bruno Ganz has died, aged 77. 

According to BBC, the Swiss actor succumbed to colon cancer at his home in Zurich on Friday night.

Bruno had roles alongside Liam Neeson in 2011’s Unknown, and with Denzel Washington in the 2004 blockbuster The Manchurian Candidate.

 His most famous role, however, was as Adolf Hitler in the 2004 Oscar-nominated film Downfall. 

The movie, which chronicled the final days of a delusional Hitler’s life in a bunker, also earned Bruno fame in recent years in a series of memes that went viral.

According to Sky News, Bruno immersed himself in the Hitler role so thoroughly that it started to affect his personality. 

"I tend to identify with my roles to such an extent that I appear to be totally convinced about certain statements that, in real life, I would never believe in," he said.

A review of the film by The Guardian’s Rob Mackie at the time described Ganz as “the most convincing screen Hitler yet: an old, bent, sick dictator with the shaking hands of someone with Parkinson’s, alternating between rage and despair in his last days in the bunker”.

Bruno is survived by his son, Daniel.

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Sources: Sky News, BBC

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