Biography
David Hurst (born Heinrich Theodor Hirsch) was a German actor. He appeared in the 1969 film Hello, Dolly! as Rudolph Reisenweber.
Born in Berlin in 1926, Hurst grew up in a theatrical family and came to Britain as a child via the Kindertransport. He began his stage career in Belfast, where he adopted his professional name, and performed with ENSA during the Second World War. After a West End debut in 1948, he appeared in numerous British films of the 1950s before moving to the United States in 1957. There he worked extensively in theatre, receiving the Clarence Derwent Award in 1959 and an Obie Award in 1964, and took character roles in films including Kelly's Heroes (1970) and The Boys from Brazil (1978), as well as television series such as Star Trek (1966) and Mission: Impossible (1966). He also taught as a visiting professor at Yale, Boston University and Carnegie Mellon.
Hurst returned to Germany in the 1990s and collaborated with director George Tabori. He retired in 2000 and died in Berlin in 2019.
