Wilhelm von Homburg
Wilhelm von Homburg is an actor, born 1940.
Before the films there was boxing. Norbert Grupe, born in Berlin in 1940, fought professionally and wrestled professionally, and it was the body and the face that Hollywood eventually hired, under the name Wilhelm von Homburg. His first screen appearances were small enough to go uncredited, including a bit in Torn Curtain (1966), followed by bit parts in The Devil's Brigade (1968) and The Wrecking Crew (1968).
Werner Herzog gave him his most interesting early part, the pimp in Stroszek (1977), a film about German emigrants in Wisconsin with no interest in flattering anyone in it. Then came the run people actually remember. He is James, one of the terrorists in Die Hard (1988), a small role in a film where the small roles are unusually well drawn. The following year, Ghostbusters II made him Vigo the Carpathian, a long-dead tyrant living inside a painting, and gave him the only genuinely large part of his career.
After that: Simon in In the Mouth of Madness (1995), Charles Macum Diggs in Diggstown (1992), a West Berlin police lieutenant in The Package (1989). He died in 2004. The career is a short list of exact uses of one specific physical fact, and there was never a version of it in which he played the lead in something warm.
Movies (10)
TV (1)
Where to start with Wilhelm von Homburg
Nobody hired him for range, and Ghostbusters II is the exception: the only place he gets a whole character to play, so begin there. Vigo is a painting with a bad attitude and the best design idea in the film.
For the version most people have seen without registering him, Die Hard puts him in the crew, and part of that film's pleasure is how distinct each henchman is on almost no dialogue. Then Stroszek, which is the serious recommendation, a strange and bleak comedy about arriving in America and finding it worse than advertised. In the Mouth of Madness and Diggstown are the second-tier ones, both fun, and The Package is the Cold War thriller for a rainy afternoon.