Herb Andress

Herb Andress

With a physical appearance that conjures up images of Lee Marvin crossed with a later-day (and slightly more physically imposing) James Caan, Teutonic screen star Herb Andress found success in both Europe and abroad in such films as Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Beware the Holy Whore (1971) and the 1985 sci-fi drama Enemy Mine. After launching a stateside career in the campy 1966 horror musical The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, the Austrian native spent the majority of the 1970s essaying bit roles in such features as The Big Bust Out, As of Tomorrow, and Casanova & Co. As he grew increasingly disillusioned with the American film industry (due in no small part to typecasting as the typical, blond-haired German soldier), Andress gravitated ever more frequently toward such German efforts as Purity of Heart and The Venus Trap in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Andress appeared almost exclusively on the German screen, though the English-language drama Baltic Storm would offer the enduring actor in his final role before he died of cancer in April of 2004. Herb Andress was 69. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide