Burkhard Driest  Burkhard Driest (; 28 April 1939 – 27 February 2020) was a German actor, writer and director, known for his acting work in Sam Peckinpah's "Cross of Iron" and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Querelle". He also wrote novels and screenplays. Driest was born in Stettin, Germany (now Poland), on 28 April 1939, the son of a graduate economist and a piano teacher. At the end of World War II, the family fled to Peine, Lower Saxony. His parents were divorced in 1950. The children stayed with the mother, who moved to Göttingen, but he returned to his father in 1957. In an anthology from 1995, Driest described his memories of childhood and adolescence under the title "Halbstark in Peine". He was dismissed from school four times but achieved the Abitur as the third-best of that year. Driest studied law for ten semesters in Kiel, Berlin and Göttingen. On 11 May 1965, three weeks before his oral law examination, he robbed the savings bank () in Burgdorf. He was sentenced to five years in prison and released after three years and four months. He then worked in the port of Hamburg, and as a waiter and taxi driver in London. He published his first novel, "Die Verrohung des Franz Blum" (The brutalization of Franz Blum), with autobiographical aspects, in 1974. He wrote the screenplay for a 1974 film of the same name, directed by Reinhard Hauff, with Jürgen Prochnow in the title role, and Driest in a minor role. Peter Zadek invited him to play the role of Stanley Kowalski in "Endstation Sehnsucht" ("A Streetcar Named Desire") by Tennessee Williams, with Rosel Zech as Blanche, at the Schauspielhaus Bochum. The same year, Driest was a guest on Dietmar Schönherr's talk show, with Romy Schneider and Bubi Scholz. During this live appearance, Schneider touched Driest's arm, saying "Sie gefallen mir! Sie gefallen mir sehr!" (I like you! I like you a lot!) in words from a recent popular film in which Schneider had starred. The incident won him increased attention. Driest worked with directors such as Werner Herzog (for "Stroszek"), Sam Peckinpah (for "Cross of Iron"), and Reinhard Hauff on four projects.