Film Career
Thinking of a future after boxing, he launched a career as an actor, debuting with a small role in the World War II related film Morituri (1965) starring Marlon Brando, and around the same time a bit part in the Hitchcock political thriller Torn Curtain (1966), with Paul Newman in the lead role.
After being defeated in the boxing ring by Oscar Bonavena in 1969, Homburg made an appearance on German TV the next day. After the reporter Rainer Günzler had made some snide remarks about his boxing career and his flamboyant lifestyle, Homburg sat through the 10 minute live interview not answering any of Günzler's questions, only putting on a sarcastic smile that he later used in the film Ghostbusters II (1989).
Homburg appeared in small roles in several films such as The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Sharon Tate and Dean Martin, in which Homburg plays the character Gregor. He appeared as a villainous pimp in the Werner Herzog film Stroszek (1977).
After 1977, Homburg's career in movies was in abeyance for a decade as he was given a prison sentence of two years and three months for "physical injury" (possibly assault) and "activities in prostitution". It has been reported that Homburg spent about five years behind bars during his life. Homburg made his big screen return in the action thriller Die Hard (1988) with Alan Rickman and Andreas Wisniewski. Homburg plays James, a member of the German terrorist group that plans to rob the Nakatomi Tower, meeting his demise courtesy of a DIY bomb from John McClane (Bruce Willis). From there, Homburg appeared in the movie sequel Ghostbusters II (1989) playing Vigo the Carpathian, a 17th Century Eastern European tyrant (based loosely on Vlad Ţepeş), the role for which Homburg is possibly best known (though he was dubbed by Max von Sydow). Homburg appeared in several films over the next few years including Diggstown (1992), with James Woods, and as Simon in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1994). The film with Woods centers around his character, Charles Diggs, who is a boxer who cannot speak owing to brain damage acquired in a fight.
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