'Blade Runner' actor on 'strange profession'

Hauer wasn't an unknown at the time. He was a leading Dutch film star, having appeared in the country's first smash TV show, "Floris," and two big European movies, "Turkish Delight" and Paul Verhoeven's "Soldier of Orange."

He had even made an impression on American audiences with his performance as a German terrorist in the Sylvester Stallone action film "Nighthawks."

But had he taken "Das Boot," he writes in his new memoir, "All Those Moments" (HarperCollins; co-written with Patrick Quinlan), he "would have been committed to a long shoot" -- 14 months, as "Das Boot" was released as a miniseries in Europe -- and yet another role as a German. He didn't want to be typecast, and he didn't want to devote more than a year of his life to a project, so he passed.
Source: Cnn