German actor with blond hair and blue eyes, who often performed in roles portraying German soldiers due to his archetypal Nordic German look.
He made his film début in a German picture, “The Young Eagles,” but whose acting career was interrupted when he was conscripted into the German Wehrmacht in 1944 at age 16. In March 1945, Krüger was conscripted into the 38th SS Division Nibelungen, where he was drawn into heavy fighting before being captured by American forces.
He first came to the attention of English language audiences in the 1957 British war film “The One That Got Away,” the story of Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war to successfully escape from Allied custody and return to Germany.
In 1960, Krüger bought Ngorongoro farm in the then Tanganyika Territory, which he owned for 13 years. Ngorongoro served as the setting for the 1962 film “Hatari!,” a Howard Hawks film, in which Krüger appeared with John Wayne.
Fluent in German, English and French, he has worked in numerous European and American films such as the Oscar-winning “Les dimanches de ville d’Avray” (1962), the original 1965 version of “The Flight of the Phoenix” and the German version of “The Moon is Blue.”
Krüger married three times. His daughter Christiane Krüger and his son, Hardy Krüger, Jr. are also actors. Hardy Krüger died at his home in Palm Springs, California, on 19 January 2022 at the age of 93.
Link to Wikipedia biography