Helmut Schmid (actor)

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Helmut Schmid (born April 8, 1925 in Neu-Ulm , † July 18, 1992 in Heiligenschwendi , Switzerland ) was a German actor and director .

education

The son of the actor Paul Schmid and the opera singer Helene Schög initially did not want to follow in the artistic footsteps of his father, who u. a. Was director of the Innsbruck State Theater . Instead he began to study medicine and law after graduating from high school (1943) and the subsequent military service. Eventually he took acting classes and gave up his studies.

stage

In 1945 he made his stage debut as Posa in Schiller's Don Carlos at the Innsbruck State Theater . He was part of the ensemble there until 1947, before further stage engagements took him to Memmingen (1947–1949), Saarbrücken (1949–1952), Wuppertal (1952/53), Kiel (1953/54) and the Stuttgart State Theater . Schmid initially embodied the type of the youthful hero and nature boy. He played the upright businessman “Antonio” in Shakespeare's Was ihr wollt (Stuttgart 1954), “Carlos” in Georges Feydeau's Flea in the Ear and “Noah Curry” in N. Richard Nash's Regenmacher (both 1955 in Stuttgart) - eleven years later he embodied "Noah Curry" again, this time for a television production.

From the mid-1950s Schmid, who had become known through cinema productions, was often seen in tragic leading roles, such as the title role of Heinrich von Kleist's Prince von Homburg and as "Karl Moor" in Schiller's Robbers .

Despite numerous successes in film and television, he was drawn back to the stage again and again in the following years. a. to Munich and Berlin as well as to numerous touring theaters, in which he occasionally also directed .

Movie and TV

In 1954 Schmid made his feature film debut alongside Edith Mill in the romantic comedy Geliebtes Fräulein Doktor . This was initially followed by prominent supporting roles in productions such as Der Mann im Strom with Hans Albers (based on Siegfried Lenz ) and the film adaptation of B. Traven's Dead Ship (with Mario Adorf and Horst Buchholz ). In the historical film Gustav Adolfs Page , based on the novella of the same name by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer , Schmid played the ambitious and unscrupulous Duke of Lauenburg , who ultimately had to pay for his intrigues against the Swedish king Gustav Adolf ( Curd Jürgens ) with his life.

His other films include the drama Because the woman is weak (leading role alongside Sonja Ziemann ), the thriller The Testament of Dr. Mabuse , the comedy Kohlhiesels Töchter with Dietmar Schönherr and his wife Liselotte Pulver, the western They called him Gringo with Götz George and the drama Das Haus in der Karpfengasse after Moscheh Ya'akov Ben-Gavriêl , with Edith Schultze-Westrum in the leading role, Schmid was also the second director.

He has also appeared in various international productions, including alongside Van Heflin and Charles Laughton in the Italian war film Under Ten Flags , in the Billy Wilder comedy One, Two, Three , as a leading actor alongside Stanley Baker in the British thriller network and in the war films Top Secret (with Klaus Maria Brandauer ) and Assumption Commando El Alamein (with Lee van Cleef ).

On television he was seen in adaptations of stage designs such as Christopher Fry's Die Dame ist nicht fürs Feuer as well as in various television series such as The Perpetrator on the Track and Das Kriminalmuseum . He had his last appearance in front of the camera in 1975, directed by Rolf Hädrich, in a multi-part television series based on Theodor Fontane's Der Stechlin .

Private

Schmid was married to the actress Liselotte Pulver from 1961 until his death . Marc-Tell (* 1962) and Melisande (1968-1989) emerged from the marriage. Two other children, Michael (* 1948) and Nina (* 1958) came from a previous marriage.

Schmid's health deteriorated with age. He died in 1992 in his adopted Swiss home in the canton of Bern of complications from a heart attack . His grave is in the cemetery in Perroy in the canton of Vaud on Lake Geneva , where his daughter Melisande was buried.

Filmography

literature

  • Frank Raberg : Biographical Lexicon for Ulm and Neu-Ulm 1802-2009 . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft im Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7995-8040-3 , p. 371 f .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schmid, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor and director
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH New Ulm
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1992
Place of death Heiligenschwendi