Dirch Passer

Dirch Hartvig Passer (18 May 1926 – 3 September 1980) was a celebrated Danish actor. He was greatly renowned for his improvisational skills and, with a filmography comprising 90 movies, one of Denmark's most prolific actors. His life is depicted in the Danish semi-biographical film A Funny Man (2011, Danish title Dirch) directed by Martin Zandvliet.

Life

When he was young, Passer was very shy, and had a dream of becoming an actor, but consented to his father's wishes by attending J. Lauritzen's sea training school near Svendborg in 1944. But since he had ongoing problems with seasickness, he later started at the drama school De frederiksbergske teatres Elevskole.

During the 1950s he formed a duo with his colleague and friend Kjeld Petersen. Their revue sketches, based upon the contrast between Petersen’s mixture of joviality and desperate anger and Passer’s deadpan responses, are still considered classics by the public. The sudden death of Kjeld Petersen in 1962 led Passer to avoid revues for five years, but he built up an individual reputation and in 1967 he returned to the revue gaining new victories. Many thin jokes in the scripts were greatly improved by his performance. In particular, his many amiable eccentrics and "nature experts" together with his sketch roles as a baby and as a nonsense "Russian"-speaking clown made him famous. From his later years must be mentioned an almost silent sketch in which he portrays a man’s vain attempt to stop smoking (also shown in West German TV). It was told that he could speak any language, however he wouldn't understand any of it, which was one of his good qualities. In his life, Dirch Passer wanted to play more serious roles than what he usually did, which was very comedic. But sadly, his image as a comedian was so solid, that when he tried to do so, the moment he showed himself on stage, the audience broke in laughter. This saddened him greatly, and because of that, he only attempted it once.