Before he even learnt to breathe, Udo Kier was all but erased. His story starts in the midst of falling bombs and crumbling walls rather than on a movie set or under stage lights. He was born in Europe during the Second World War and saved as a baby from a city that was being destroyed. He had every cause to be engulfed by history. Rather, he managed to survive, and his survival turned into the first act of a defiant existence.
Lack and scarcity impacted his early years. It was normal to be hungry. Cold chambers were commonplace. There was a quiet that reverberated throughout his youth as a father figure never fully emerged. Even still, Kier exuded an odd, unsaid tenacity, as though every hardship served as a practice run for something greater. Before learning to speak, he learnt to observe, and before learning to dream, he learned to endure. Later on, that vigilance would prove to be his most effective tool.
