Dieter Laser, ‘The Human Centipede’ Star, Dead at 78

German actor Dieter Laser has passed away at the age of 78. Laser, perhaps best remembered for his role in the 2009 Dutch horror flick The Human Centipede, died on February 29, according to Bloody Disgusting.

Laser starred as Dr. Josef Heiter in The Human Centipede, the mastermind behind the entire evil scheme: to surgically attach a trio of people together to create a single intestinal track. His unnerving performance, and obvious commitment to the role, stood out in a film with an already outrageous premise. He also returned to the franchise in 2015 for The Human Centipede (The Final Sequence) playing a new character, Bill Boss. Tom Six, who directed The Human Centipede, also offered his condolences on Twitter on Thursday after learning about the news.

Back in 2010, the actor spoke to KPBS about what went into the character of Dr. Heiter. As he explained it, he was “talking from under the surface, the surface is just a villain, bad, very, very dark sinister guy.

“And that is the entertaining surface, that’s for to get goosebumps, to be excited, to get [excited] for your money, and just to be entertained,” Laser continued. “That’s the first duty. But underneath you have in this wonderfully designed carton it is empty in the end that’s bad therefore we, you have to fill up the others layers and the script suggests very clearly in its mood and its whole description, suggests very clearly that this Dr. Heiter is built very near to the psychopaths of Nazi time.”

While he said the film balanced the dark humor with the underlying seriousness of history, “we want to understand how this psyche works and how it comes.”

Laser was born in Kiel, Germany back in 1942 and started acting back in 1968. However, he first gained notoriety with English-speaking audiences after landing the role of Mantrid on the sci-fi series Lexx, which ran from 1997 through 2002. According to IMDb, he starred in roughly 65 films alongside some Hollywood legends including Burt Lancaster, Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Glenn Close and John Malkovich.