Hobo with a Shotgun Star Rutger Hauer: 'I've Been Underrated All My Life'

Forget Lizzie Olsen; the breakout star of Sundance 2011 is clearly 67-year-old Rutger Hauer, who's taken Park City by storm with his star turn in Jason Eisener's grindhouse homage Hobo with a Shotgun. To celebrate the gory, tongue-in-cheek vigilante tale about -- yes -- a homeless hero with a shotgun, the Hobo folks hosted a thematically relevant Bloody Mary hour this morning where Hauer walked in wielding his titular firearm and regaled Movieline with six important revelations/life lessons:

1. Not only is Hauer a Sundance virgin, but he also has another film in the festival: The experimentally tinged The Mill and the Cross (based on a Renaissance painting). He adds, however, that working in different genres makes little difference to him.

2. He wasn't expecting the enthusiastic reception that Hobo earned at its midnight premiere. "I don't know the genre that much and I could tell from the internet that there's a huge following," Hauer said. "That surprised me."

3. Hauer, who has a home in Los Angeles, doesn't get out to the multiplex much, mostly because he's always working: "I make more movies than I see."

4. He's never seen every Rutger Hauer film -- and he's not alone. "Nobody's seen all my work," Hauer asserted, pointing to his over 50-year career inside and out of Hollywood. "No one. No one in the world has seen all my movies. Some things just never came out... some things may still come out." (Note: You can see Rutger as a mortician in this week's The Rite!)

5. He's a workaholic with six films coming out this year -- "and they're all crazy."

6. Despite having amassed very different followings from films like Ladyhawke, The Hitcher, Blind Fury, and Flesh + Blood, Hauer is grateful, in a way, that he isn't more famous: "I'm investing a lot of time figuring out where I'm going to go," he explained. "I'm way bigger than people think I am. I'm way bigger. I've been underrated all my life, and that's fine. I have privacy. I can walk the street without being hassled. I can be a regular guy. The price to give that up is so horrible. When you become a part of the hysteria -- it's not completely in my hands -- you have to hide."

More from Movieline's complete Sundance coverage at the Dockers House sponsored by Java Monster here.