German film actor Udo Kier, who famously collaborated with A-list filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Lars von Trier, and Gus Van Sant, died in a hospital in Palm Springs, California, on November 23. He was 81. Kier’s longtime partner and artist, Delbert McBride, announced the death to Variety.Udo Kier was born to a single mother named Thekla Kierspe during the Second World War. He never met his father. The My Own Private Idaho star shared the dramatic story of his birth multiple times during the course of the interviews over the decades. He mentioned being rescued from the rubble of a bomb-ridden hospital in Cologne, Nazi Germany, two hours after being born in October 1944.All about Udo Kier’s motherUdo Kier spoke to Dazed & Confused in October 2011 as part of the magazine’s 20th anniversary issue. During the conversation, he revealed the events following his birth.“I know the day I was born was the most important day, not because my mother gave life to me, but how dramatic the story was. I was one hour old and the nurse was collecting all the babies – the newborns – from their mothers and cleaning them,” Udo stated.He continued:“My mother said, ‘Could I hold him a little bit longer?’ and the nurse said yes. Then the wall of the hospital collapsed over her – the building had been bombed. My mother was lucky because her bed was in a corner, so it was architecturally protected. She held me with one arm, and with the other, she made a hole in the rubble until they freed her, with me. I was two hours old. That is how I was born.”Udo Kier’s mother was a tailor who was born in 1908 and died in 1986. Meanwhile, his father had a family of his own with a wife and three children, who abandoned them soon after Udo’s birth. Thus, he grew up in “unimaginable poverty,” according to his March 2020 sit-down with the Irish Times.In December 2008, Udo Kier mourned the passing of his mother, 22 years after the loss. At the time, his mother’s grave at the Cologne-Mulheim cemetery went missing. He told German outlet BILD:“The stone carved by a friend, an artist, was thrown away. Her grave is gone. Everything has been flattened. I never received a letter from the cemetery administration. I can't explain it.”Kier added, “My mother would have turned 100 this year. I wanted to bring her flowers. I always visited her when I came to Germany and told her about my work in Los Angeles.”It is noteworthy that Udo Kier wanted to be buried next to his mother. However, when Thekla Kierspe’s grave disappeared, he was unsure where he wanted to rest.Details about Kier’s memorial service have not been made public at the time of writing. He had no children. His closest relative was his life partner, Delbert McBride.In April 2019, Udo told The Guardian’s Alex Godfrey in an interview that in the past, he didn’t like the word “family,” as he didn’t have one of his own. However, he revealed that in the course of his life and career, he created a family of his own comprising of few close friends, including writer-director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was his teenage friend, professional collaborator, and former lover.“When you don’t have a family, you create one. I only have a few friends and I consider them, now, as my family,” Kier told Godfrey.Udo Kier was also the godfather to Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier’s eldest child, Agnes.