Bruno Ganz, who played Adolf Hitler in 'Downfall', dies at 77

Swiss actor, Bruno Ganz, who is best known for his role as the Nazi’ Führer in the 2004 film Downfall, has died at the age of 77. According to reports, the veteran actor died in his Zurich home after his long battle with cancer.

Apart from starring in German-language cinema and theatre, Ganz is also known for English-language films like The Reader, The Manchurian Candidate among others. His last film performance was as Verge in Lars von Trier's horror movie The House That Jack Built (2018), playing a character that alludes to the figure of Virgil in Dante's "Inferno."

His most famous role, however, was as Adolf Hitler in Downfall, that showed the final hours of the infamous dictator notoriously becoming a viral meme and spawned thousands of parodies online. The film, called Der Untergang in German, told the story of Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker. It grossed $92m (£71.3m) at box offices around the world when it was released.