Helmut Berger - Part 2

Thread Part one

Helmut Berger "Remember me for my movies, not because of my scandals!"

Helmut Berger : "I don't know what morality is. I don't know what immorality is either. I only have my conscience."

Princess Grace with Helmut Berger in 1973.

Helmut getting arrested after wreaking havoc in Rome.

Helmut Berger interview - 2019

Helmut Berger was a European star in the 1960s and 1970s. He enjoyed fame and parties, but crashed violently, not least because of alcoholism, and ended up in the RTL jungle camp. "This jungle that haunts me as if I hadn't done anything else," he says in a new documentary.

Visconti was his "father substitute". Visconti dies in 1976 and Berger falls into a crisis. A suicide attempt, excessive alcoholism, a decadent lifestyle followed, but hardly any new big roles.

Instead of acting, he is more talked about with appearances on talk shows. "I'm totally sunk," he explained in 1996 in Harald Schmidt's Sat.1 show at the time.

"I used to look better. But I don't look bad with my 75 either. That's because I stopped drinking excessively. Since then, I've seen my cheekbones again," the actor told German BILD.

But he doesn't want to be young again, as he told the paper. "No thanks! My youth was very exhausting. Not only for me, but also for the others. I was a wild guy and sometimes unpredictable.," said Berger.

He actually only received the great attention again when he moved to the RTL jungle camp in 2013. For health reasons, he gets out after a few days, but suddenly younger people know him too. The appearance was certainly not particularly beneficial for his image. "I don't give a shit," says Berger to filmmaker Valesca Peters when she asks what other people think of him.

Finally, Berger argued in court with the director Andreas Horvath, who had shown him masturbating in the documentary "Helmut Berger, Actor". "Exposing and disparaging" were some scenes, so the charge.

Berger will celebrate his 75th birthday in Bad Ischl, where he was born. There he receives the city's cultural emblem at a ceremony, and a bust of the actor is to be unveiled beforehand on the forecourt of the Lehartheater, showing him in his brilliant role as Ludwig II.

"I'll treat myself to a few glasses of champagne. There are many friends from all over Europe. I have also invited a few old schoolmates. I still know their names today. My memory has always been good,"