Eric Braeden (born Hans-Jörg Gudegast; April 3, 1941) is a German-born film and television actor, known for his roles as Victor Newman on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless, as Hans Dietrich in the 1960s TV series The Rat Patrol, Dr. Charles Forbin in Colossus: The Forbin Project, and as John Jacob Astor IV in the 1997 film Titanic. He won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1998 for Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the role of Victor Newman. Early life Braeden was born Hans-Jörg Gudegast in Bredenbek, Germany (near Kiel), a small village in northern Germany where his father was once mayor. In his autobiography, titled I'll Be Damned, published by Harper Collins in 2017, Braeden revealed that he was a survivor of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff sinking. The MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German armed military transport ship which was sunk on January 30, 1945 by Soviet submarine S-13, in the Baltic Sea, while evacuating German civilian and military refugees. It is estimated that 9,400 people died. It was the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history. He emigrated to the United States in 1959, and attended the University of Montana, Missoula. Career Braeden accumulated many TV and film credits during his first two decades in America, and guest-starred in 120 roles. His earliest credits were all under his birth name, Hans Gudegast. During the 1960s he appeared in several episodes of TV's longest-running World War II drama (1962–1967) Combat!, always playing a German soldier. In 1965, he appeared in a film called Morituri starring Marlon Brando and Yul Brynner, and guest-starred in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. as T.H.R.U.S.H. agent Mr. Oakes in "The Discotheque Affair"; season two, episode five. In 1966, he guest-starred as Luftwaffe Major Bentz in episode 28, "Day of Reckoning", of season two of the TV series Twelve O'Clock High (a series which was very loosely based on the classic 1949 war film with the same name) and also appeared in an episode of the 1966 espionage drama series Blue Light. His main character for the next two years was his regular starring role playing German Hauptmann (Captain) Hans Dietrich on the TV series The Rat Patrol (1966–1968), He starred in the 1969 western 100 Rifles with Raquel Welch, Burt Reynolds and Jim Brown (noted for the first big-screen interracial love scene between Welch and Brown),