Christian Berkel

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Christian Berkel, Berlinale 2009

Christian Berkel (born October 28, 1957 in Berlin ( West )) is a German actor , author and speaker.

He became known to a wide audience in 2001 as prisoner No. 38 in the movie Das Experiment (2001) directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and as an SS doctor in the Oscar-nominated movie Der Untergang (2004). Berkel was involved in national and international productions as a film actor.

Life

Berkel was born in Berlin-Tegel in 1957 . He is of Jewish descent on his mother's side , but baptized and raised a Catholic . His mother Sala emigrated to France in 1938, and from 1945 on to Argentina. Berkel's mother could not marry his father Otto during the National Socialist era . During the war this medical officer was in the Wehrmacht . In 1950 he returned from captivity and married another woman. In 1955 Berkel's mother came back to Germany and found Berkel's father again. Otto Berkel then divorced and married his childhood sweetheart and Berkel's mother. Berkel is the grandson of the writer and anarchist Johannes Nohl , grandnephew of the pedagogue Hermann Nohl on his mother's side and the French fashion designer Lola Prusac (Prusak), who came from Poland . a. designed the Hèrmes scarves . Berkel spent part of his youth in France. Berkel has lived with actress Andrea Sawatzki since 1997, and they got married in December 2011. The couple have two sons (* 1999 and * 2002) and live in Berlin.

Berkel is very committed to society. Among other things, he is the ambassador of the Foundation Germany rounds up , which is committed to combating child poverty, to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation to fight right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism and to the ChildFund Germany , in which he and his wife support twelve sponsored children.

For the Ludwig Börne Prize 2017, Berkel was, as usual there, the sole judge (juror) and selected Rüdiger Safranski as the winner .

plant

Andrea Sawatzki and her husband Christian Berkel with the German Television Prize 2009

Movie and TV

Berkel at the Berlinale 2010

Christian Berkel had lived in Paris as a teenager from the age of fourteen . His first decisive encounter with the theater there was the work of Marcel Marceau , whose pantomimes he reenacted at home. While he was still in school, he took acting lessons from Pierre Bertin, which Jean-Louis Barrault arranged for him. After graduating from high school, he trained at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin.

In 1977, at the age of 19, he was cast by Ingmar Bergman for the role of student in The Snake Egg . In the crime scene episode Red - Red - Dead , the case with the highest number of viewers of all crime scenes, Berkel played the son of the actuary Konrad Pfandler ( Curd Jürgens ) in 1978 . He then worked at well-known German-speaking theaters until 1993: Stadttheater Augsburg , Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus , Schauspielhaus Bochum , Residenztheater Munich , Burgtheater Vienna, Schillertheater Berlin . He worked with Claus Peymann , Rudolf Noelte and Alexander Lang , among others .

In 1998 he received the Golden Gong for his role creation of the psychopathic father of a family in the crime scene series Schwarzer Advent , directed by Jobst Oetzmann . In the following years, Berkel played in Dominik Graf's Your best years , in Helmut Dietl's comedy Rossini - or the murderous question of who slept with whom, the role of banker Weich as well as in Dieter Wedel's multi-part series The King of St. Pauli and The Semmeling Affair .

In 2002 Berkel directed the French war drama Laissez-Passer under the direction of Bertrand Tavernier . In 2004, Berkel starred in Men Like Us a gay footballer under the direction of Sherry Hormann and in the same year in Lautlos (director: Mennan Yapo ) the police psychologist Lang. For the role of the doctor Prof. Dr. Schenck in the Oscar- nominated film The Downfall , he was awarded the Bambi in 2004.

In 2005, Berkel embodied the character of General Käutner in the internationally successful production Black Book at the side of Sebastian Koch and the role of morgue director in the Hollywood production Flightplan - Without any trace with Jodie Foster in the title role, directed by Paul Verhoeven . In 2006 you saw Berkel in the television film Die Sturmflut (director: Jorgo Papavassiliou) in the role of the then Interior Senator Helmut Schmidt . Also in 2006, Berkel starred in the two-part therapist comedy Helen, Fred and Ted as Eduard "Ted" Fröhlich with director Sherry Hormann. Together with his partner and colleague Andrea Sawatzki , he received a nomination for the Golden Camera award the following year . Despite the rare unanimous critical praise, the ARD's two-part pilot film was not produced as a series because the audience rating was not high enough for those responsible.

In 2007 he was seen in the role of Vinkelmeyer in the drama Leningrad, directed by Aleksandr Buravsky. In the same year, Christian Berkel received an offer from Hollywood for the second time: he played the role of Albrecht in the cinema production Operation Walküre - Das Stauffenberg-Attentat , a thriller about the failed Hitler attack in 1944 (with Tom Cruise as Count Stauffenberg ) Mertz von Quirnheim . As landlord Eric, Berkel was part of the cast of Quentin Tarantino's film Inglourious Basterds from 2009. In the same year he was seen again as Helmut Schmidt in the TV film Mogadishu , this time as Chancellor during the hijacking of the plane “Landshut” . In 2016 he starred a second time in a film by Paul Verhoeven, the award-winning French thriller Elle , opposite Isabelle Huppert . In 2018 he played a leading role in the Amazon Prime series Beat (director: Marco Kreuzpaintner) and in 2019 he shot the series Criminal for Netflix (director: Oliver Hirschbiegel).

Berkel had many episode roles in television crime series or series such as Derrick , Der Alte , SOKO 5113 and Polizeiruf 110 . In the ZDF series Der Kriminalist , he has played the leading role of the silent LKA chief inspector Bruno Schumann since 2006. In 2019, Berkel announced that he was quitting the criminalist to move on to new projects.

Audiobook / radio play / dubbing

Berkel is a popular voice actor for animation films and reads audio books.

In 2008 he read from Jonathan Littell's novel Die Wohlgesinnten for the (Internet) reading room of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . For the 125th birthday of the painter Pablo Picasso , he read Hajo Düchting's Picasso biography for Eichborn Verlag . Together with his long-time partner Andrea Sawatzki, he recorded the audio books for the two novels Gut gegen Nordwind , which was awarded gold in the audio book award in Germany in 2010 , and All Seven Waves by Daniel Glattauer . In 2009 Christian Berkel slipped with Andrea Sawatzki as Mrs. Fuchs in the title part of the film The Fantastic Mr. Fox based on the children's book The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl , of which he recorded an audio book version in 2010. In 2013 he spoke the audio book version of Joanne K. Rowling's novel A sudden death as a complete reading on 16 CDs (Hörverlag, Hamburg).

Filmography

Radio plays

Fonts

  • "Childhood in your pocket" . In: Beatrice Ottersbach (Hrsg.): Actor confessions . UVK-Verlag, Konstanz 2007, ISBN 978-3-89669-685-4 , pp. 20–31, limited preview in the Google book search.
  • On the way to Proust. Memories of a reading that changed my life . In: The Literary World , October 26, 2013, pp. 1 ff., Online.
  • The apple tree . Novel. Ullstein, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-550-08196-5 , limited preview in the Google book search, (also as an audio book on 10 CDs read by the author, ISBN 978-3-95713-136-2 ).
    In this autofictional novel, Berkel primarily tells the story of his parents, but above all that of his half-Jewish mother. Among other things, she was interned in Camp de Gurs during the Second World War , which takes up a large part of this book. In this context, Berkel also erects a literary monument to     Horst Rosenthal, who is largely unknown in Germany .

Awards

Web links

Commons : Christian Berkel  - collection of images, videos and audio files

items

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Profile: Christian Berkel as Helmut Schmidt. ( Memento of December 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). In: Das Erste , 2008.
  2. ^ A b c M. Schacht: TV star Christian Berkel on his family history. In: Bild , May 3, 2013, interview.
  3. ↑ a b c d Ralf Balke: Community Day reading. Suddenly Jewish. In: Jüdische Allgemeine , December 18, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b Elmar Krekeler: “It was like living with dementia”. In: Die Welt , September 1, 2016, interview.
  5. ↑ dpa / cor: Sawatzki marries Christian Berkel after 14 years. In: Welt Online , December 18, 2011.
  6. ↑ List: Prominent Ambassadors. In: Foundation Germany rounds up , accessed on February 19, 2020.
  7. ↑ List: Supporters of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation. In: Amadeu Antonio Foundation , accessed February 19, 2020.
  8. ↑ Change money for meaning. Do like us. Take part! ( Memento from September 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: ChildFund Germany  / Kinderwelten , 2012, No. 3.
  9. ^ Thorsten Otto : Christian Berkel, actor. ( Memento of September 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: Bayern 3 , September 23, 2011, conversation, 42:22 min .; Model Marcel Marceau, from 14:59 min., (Audio file inactive).
  10. ↑ Martin Klein: Baldness obliges. In: Die Welt , August 13, 2008.
  11. ↑ "Red - red - dead": The record "crime scene" at SWR. In: digitalfernsehen.de , December 27, 2011.
  12. ↑ Video: Helen, Fred and Ted 1. What is normal? In: YouTube , 2006, 1:24 min.
  13. ↑ André Mielke: Did Derrick have his own bed? In: Berliner Morgenpost , December 7, 2008.
  14. ↑ Christian Berkel reads ( memento of December 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Die Wohlgesinnnten by Jonathan Littell , in: lesesaal.faz.net , February 2, 2008, (inactive), video copy.
  15. ↑ Gold / platinum database. In: Bundesverband Musikindustrie , (name required), accessed on February 19, 2020.
  16. ↑ The wonderful Mr. Fox. ( Memento from April 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: Der Westen , May 12, 2010, picture series from the puppet theater .
  17. ↑ Nora Gantenbrink , Sebastian Hammelehle, with material from dpa , AFP and dapd : New novel by Joanne K. Rowling. Hype, but not Book of Fall. In: Spiegel Kultur , September 27, 2012, as " News ticker ", section: "+++ A lot of fitness +++ [1:16 p.m.]".
  18. ↑ Press release: German Audio Book Prize 2020 for Camilla Renschke, Christian Berkel and Jürgen von der Lippe. In: WDR , January 30, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Berkel, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin