A huge blow to the national ego of the Netherlands, as we all saw him as 'our man in Hollywood'. The Dutch have this strange mentality where anyone who enjoys too much success gets taken down relentlessly. You can be a winner, but you have to be a very humble one. You can be a millionaire, but you better attract not any attention to you. A Dutch magazine even has a yearly list of the 500 biggest millionaires in the country and the Netherlands is the only country where people actually object to being on that list. Rutger Hauer was a very good actor, and he soon rose above the pack, as the Dutch film industry is both small and only tells small stories. It can't do big stories, like Hollywood does, either from lack of money, but also because it is not in our national psyche to tell big stories. Rutger Hauer, and the director who made him great, Paul Verhoeven, wanted to tell big stories. And they wanted to rise above the pack. So they both moved to Hollywood.
There's another strange part of the Dutch mentality. When one of us rises above the pack we want to tear him down. But if one of us manages to succeed abroad and become a huge success, we like to claim that success as our own. Like the national team winning the European or World championship. As such we loved it when Rutger Hauer became successful in Hollywood, and when his success began to wane we felt bad for him. And whenever he did manage to score a big role again we were all Team Rutger Hauer again. As such Rutger Hauer dying is now a national disaster.
RIP Rutger Hauer, we all loved you. Both because of our national quirks, but also because you really were a good actor and a nice person.