Hiram Keller

Hiram Keller (actually Hiram Keller Undercofler Jr .; born May 3, 1944 in Moody Field , Georgia , † January 20, 1997 in Atlanta ) was an American stage and film actor .

Broadway

Keller completed his acting training at Lee Strasberg's renowned Actors Studio in New York. His first stage engagement took him to Broadway . From 1967 he played Wolf in the original line-up of Galt MacDermots , Gerome Ragnis and James Rado's musical Hair . In addition, Keller worked as a model and acted in the New York underground scene around Andy Warhol .

Movie

Two years later, Keller made his feature film debut in Fellini's Satyricon . The Italian star director Federico Fellini hired him for the second main role in his dark-looking adaptation of the novel fragment Satyrica by Petronius , because his preferred candidate for the role, Pierre Clémenti , was no longer available. Through the part of the Ascylt , Keller became internationally known. The screenwriter and long-time Fellini collaborator Bernardino Zapponi wrote about Keller's portrayal:

... has an extremely photogenic grin and is full of good knowledge to be as rejected as his role demands. (Bernardino Zapponi: Mein Freund Fellini , Munich 1997, p. 61.)

After this success, Keller received several larger roles in mainly Italian productions. He played alongside Giancarlo Giannini in Alberto Lattuada's comedy Sono stato io! , who starred male lead alongside Jane Birkin in Anthony M. Dawson's horror film Seven Dead in the Eyes of the Cat , starred in the science fiction thriller The Secret of Life (with Klaus Kinski ), Catherine Breillat's drama A Girl and in the period film Roma rivuole Cesare! . In 1970 he also played the traitor and adversary of the title hero ( John Phillip Law ), Iwan Ogareff, in an Italian-French-German-Bulgarian co-production of Jules Verne's Der Kurier des Zaren .

In 1982 he played alongside his wife Kristina St. Clair in the Jamaican film production Countryman - Lost in the jungle . Due to the commercial failure of this drama, Hiram Keller retired from his profession. He spent the last years of his life with his family in his native Georgia. He died in January 1997 of cancer .

Filmography (selection)

• 1969 Fellini's Satyricon (Satyricon)
• 1970 La notte dei fiori
• 1970 The Tsar's courier
• 1973 Sono stato io!
• 1973 Seven Dead in the Cat's Eyes (Morte negli occhi del gatto)
• 1974 Roma rivuole Cesare
• 1974 The Secret of Life (Lifespan)
• 1976 A girl (Une vraie jeune fille)
• 1982 Countryman - Lost in the Jungle (Countryman)

Web links

• Hiram Keller in the Internet Movie Database (English)