Acclaimed actor in European art cinema also secured a prominent role in US soap opera Dynasty

Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who became a star of 60s and 70s art cinema with roles in films such as Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, and Ludwig and Joseph Losey’s The Romantic Englishwoman, has died aged 78. His death was announced by his management agency, which posted a statement on its website saying Berger had “passed away peacefully but unexpectedly” in Salzburg, the city where he grew up.

Born Helmut Steinberger in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl in 1944, Berger studied acting in London before moving to Italy, where he met and began a relationship with acclaimed director Luchino Visconti, nearly 40 years his senior. Visconti gave him his first acting role, a small part in the comic anthology The Witches, and subsequently cast him in a spectacular role in his landmark 1969 epic The Damned. Berger played Martin von Essenbeck, a scion of a wealthy industrial family who struggle for control over the business in interwar Germany as the Nazis rise to power; for the film, Berger famously performed in drag as Marlene Dietrich and was subsequently nominated for a Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer.