A very handsome, strapping German character player, Kaufmann fell into film work because of the prolific and gifted neophyte film and theater director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Born to a Bavarian mother and an African-American GI stationed in Germany after WWII, Kaufmann was not a trained actor and entered cinema when Fassbinder fell madly in love with him. Although Kaufmann never knew his father or learned English, he was often cast in roles iconically suggesting "American-ness", combined with a certain exoticism which Fassbinder used as part of his ongoing critique of German and