Hiram Keller
Hiram Keller ( actually Hiram Keller Undercofler Jr., May 3, 1944 at 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 prestigious Actors Studio in New York. His first stage engagement took him to Broadway. Here he played from 1967 the wolf in the original lineup of Galt MacDermots, Gerome Ragni and James Rado's musical Hair. In addition, Keller worked as a model and acted in the New York underground scene around Andy Warhol.
Film
Two years later, Keller was in Fellini Satyricon his feature film debut. The Italian star director Federico Fellini hired him for the second lead role in his gloomy -looking adaptation of the novel fragment Satyrica of Petronius as his preferred candidate for the role, Pierre Clémenti, no longer was available. By the part of Ascylt Keller became known internationally. The screenwriter and longtime Fellini Leaders Bernardino Zapponi wrote about Keller's presentation:
After this success, Keller received several major roles in productions predominantly Italian. He starred with Giancarlo Giannini in Alberto Lattuada's comedy Sono stato io!, The male lead role opposite Jane Birkin in Anthony M. Dawson's horror movie Seven dead in the eyes of the cat, the lead role in the science fiction thriller The Secret of Life ( with Klaus Kinski ) Catherine Breillat drama A girl and in the historical drama Roma rivuole Cesare! . In 1970, he also embodied in an Italian -French- German -Bulgarian co-production of Jules Verne's The Courier of the Czar the traitor and opponent of the title character ( John Phillip Law ), Ogareff.
In 1982, he starred alongside his wife Kristina St. Clair in Jamaican cinema production Countryman - Lost in the jungle. Due to the commercial failure of this drama Hiram Keller retired from his profession. He spent his last years with his family in his native Georgia. He died in January 1997 of cancer.