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1-50 of 2,504
- Actress
- Producer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Diane Kruger was born Diane Heidkrüger in Algermissen, near Hildesheim, Germany, to Maria-Theresa, a bank employee, and Hans-Heinrich Heidkrüger, a computer specialist. She studied ballet with the Royal Ballet in London before an injury ended her career. She returned to Germany and became a top fashion model. She later pursued acting and relocated to Paris at the suggestion of filmmaker Luc Besson (The Fifth Element (1997)). She married French actor Guillaume Canet (The Beach (2000)) in 2001.- Thomas Kretschmann was born in East Germany. Before becoming an actor, he was a swimmer. He has acted in several popular American movies, such as Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), The Pianist (2002), U-571 (2000), In Enemy Hands (2004), etc. He has three children, Nicolas, Stella and Sascha with his ex-girlfriend Lena.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Pam Ferris was born on 11 May 1948 in Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress, known for Matilda (1996), Children of Men (2006) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). She has been married to Roger Frost since August 1986.- With a strong body of work in her native Germany, Antje broke out into the international marketplace in Zack Snyder's Superman retelling, "Man of Steel" as the villainess, "Faora". Other credits include Renny Harlin's "5 Days of August", Warner Brothers' "The Seventh Son", Simon Curtis's "The Woman in Gold" with Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds and Ariel Vroman's "Criminal" with Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones. Antje has most recently been seen in Stephen Poliakoff's "Close to the Enemy" for the BBC, the Sky/Amazon pilot, "Oasis" and the hit Netflix series "Dark" which has just shot it's second series which will air in summer 2019. Antje can next be seen playing the lead role in the limited series "Dead End" and in the feature "Blame Game" which opened the Max Ophuls Film Festival.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
- Music Artist
Christian Friedel was born on 9 March 1979 in Magdeburg, East Germany [now Saxony-Anhalt, Germany]. He is an actor and music artist, known for The Zone of Interest (2023), 13 Minutes (2015) and Babylon Berlin (2017).- Actress
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
Carolina Bartczak is a Polish/Canadian actor and producer. She was born in Germany after her family had fled Martial Law in Poland and later immigrated to Toronto, Canada.
She earned a Bachelor of Science at The University of Toronto, and then studied at Université of Lyon in France. In 2012 she turned to acting and studied the Meisner Technique at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City.
After several smaller roles in film and television, she went on to play the role of Magda, the wife of Magneto in X-Men: Apocalypse. Since then she has made appearances in many television shows and films, and she plays the role of Brenda Lopez in Moonfall, alongside Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, and Michael Pena.
She is fluent in English, French and Polish- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Chris Barrie was born Christopher Jonathan Brown on March 28, 1960, in a British military hospital in Hanover, Germany. He was brought up in Northern Ireland and was a boarder at Methodist College Belfast. He was Head Boy in his final year and played the lead in a "Dial M for Murder" production. He started a business course at Brighton Polytechnic but dropped out. After working at various jobs and developing his impressionist skills, he decided to shift careers to television and film.
He originally met Rob Grant and Doug Naylor on Jasper Carrott's Carrott's Lib (1982), and eventually went on to perform on the radio, for a show called "Son of Cliche", which both Rob Grant and Doug Naylor were working on. Around this time, he was working on the television show, Spitting Image (1984).
This association with Rob Grant and Doug Naylor later caused the two of them to have him audition for Red Dwarf (1988). A few years after the beginning of Red Dwarf (1988), he brought life to another character in the sitcom The Brittas Empire (1991).
He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife Alecks.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Saskia Rosendahl was born on 9 July 1993 in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. She is an actress, known for Lore (2012), The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) and Fabian: Going to the Dogs (2021).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Mehmet Kurtulus was born on 27 April 1972 in Salzgitter, Lower Saxony, Germany. He is an actor and producer, known for Big Game (2014), In July (2000) and Tatort (1970).- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
German actor Christian Oliver worked in the entertainment industry for more than 15 years, with, among others, Steven Soderbergh in The Good German; with Brian Singer and Tom Cruise in Valkyrie; and with the Wachowski sisters in Speed Racer. He also starred in Europe's Number One action series Alarm for Cobra 11 (RTL) for two years and had numerous other TV appearances in the US and Germany.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Tall, portly built German born actor (and talented violinist) who notched up over 100 film appearances, predominantly in German-language productions. He will forever be remembered by Western audiences as the bombastic megalomaniac "Auric Goldfinger" trying to kill Sean Connery and irradiate the vast US gold reserves within Fort Knox in the spectacular "James Bond" film Goldfinger (1964). However, due to Fröbe's thick German accent, his voice was actually dubbed by English actor, Michael Collins.
While commonly perceived as cold hearted & humourless from his Goldfinger (1964) portrayal, quite to the contrary, Fröbe was a jovial man and a wonderful comedic performer. His light hearted talents can be best viewed in The Ballad of Berlin (1948), Der Tag vor der Hochzeit (1952), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965). Fröbe also portrayed dogged detective Kriminalkommissar Kras/Lohmann pursuing the evil Dr. Mabuse in The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), The Return of Dr. Mabuse (1961) and The Terror of Doctor Mabuse (1962).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Edward Berger was born in 1970 in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. He is a director and writer, known for All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), Jack (2014) and Deutschland 83 (2015). He is married to Nele Mueller-Stöfen.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Hentschel worked in London as a professional backup dancer for artists such as Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Paulina Rubio, Jamelia and others. Later he was hired as a choreographer and worked on many music videos and tours in Canada and Asia.In 2003, Falk decided to stay in Los Angeles for good and pursue his dream of becoming an actor. He made his acting debut in the Emmy Award-winning show Arrested Development in 2005. Small parts in Journeyman and numerous low-budget films followed. In 2008, Hentschel decided to create his own projects and wrote the short film Who is Bobby Domino, where he met his production partner Jesse Grace. The two of them went on to write and produce more short films, of which many entered some of the most prestigious film festivals in the world and won numerous accolades. In 2009, Falk landed his first big-budget feature film role as Bernhard the assassin, co-starring next to Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in Knight and Day. The following year, Falk played the role of drug addict Richard Conway on TNT's The Closer, starring Kyra Sedgwick. In 2011, Hentschel played opposite singer Justin Bieber in the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Targets of Obsession". He also starred in the NCIS: Los Angeles episode "Archangel". In August, 2015, it was announced that Hentschel will portray the Carter Hall version of Hawkman in the 2016 show DC's Legends of Tomorrow, and also Arrow and The Flash.- Actress
- Make-Up Department
Juliane Köhler was born on 6 August 1965 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress, known for Downfall (2004), Aimee & Jaguar (1999) and Nowhere in Africa (2001). She has been married to Michael Rösch since 1996. They have two children.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Maria Schrader was born in Hanover, Federal Republic of Germany, on September 27th, 1965. She directed and co-wrote the screenplay of the awards-winning film Liebesleben (2007). As well, she directed Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (2016) and the Emmy-award wining miniseries Unorthodox (2020) (Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series). She is well known for acting in Nobody Loves Me (1994), Aimee & Jaguar (1999), The Giraffe (1998), Deutschland 83 (2015), Deutschland 86 (2018) and Deutschland 89 (2020).- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Katja Riemann was born on 1 November 1963 in Kirchweyhe, Weyhe, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress and director, known for Suck Me Shakespeer (2013), Rosenstrasse (2003) and Bandits (1997).- Actor
- Composer
- Producer
Tom Kaulitz is a German guitarist, songwriter and producer. He is best known for his work from 2001 to the present as the guitarist of the band Tokio Hotel. He has an identical twin, Bill Kaulitz, who is the lead singer of Tokio Hotel, and his best friends are Georg Listing and Gustav Schäfer. He was born in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic. Tom and his brother, Bill, used to live in Hamburg but moved to Los Angeles in October 2010 in response to an incident involving stalkers and a robbery. They are currently living in Los Angeles making music for their new album. Tom dated german model Ria Sommerfeld(b.1982) from 2011 to 2016. They were married for a little over a year until Tom filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences in September 2016.- Noted stage actress who has also done limited work in TV and film. Born in Germany and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Her Broadway debut was in "The Seagull" in 1938. She won her first Tony (and other awards) in 1950 for Clifford Odets "The Country Girl". Her second Tony was for the role of Martha in Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?".
She later became a highly influential acting teacher at New York's HB Studio (founded by Herbert Berghof in 1945) and authored best-selling acting texts, Respect for Acting, with Haskel Frankel, and A Challenge for the Actor. Her most substantial contributions to theater pedagogy were a series of "object exercises" that built on the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and Yevgeni Vakhtangov.
She was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981. She twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999. - Writer
- Director
- Producer
Tilman Singer was born in 1988 in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic [now Saxony, Germany]. He is a writer and director, known for Luz (2018), Cuckoo (2024) and El Fin Del Mundo (2016).- Anne Ratte-Polle was born in 1974 in Peheim, Molbergen, Cloppenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress, known for Dark (2017), I Was, I Am, I Will Be (2019) and Two Sides of the Abyss (2023).
- Gudrun Landgrebe was born on 20 June 1950 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, West Germany. She is an actress, known for Die Katze (1988), Yerma (1984) and A Woman in Flames (1983). She has been married to Ulrich von Nathusius since June 2001.
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Robert Siodmak (8 August 1900 - 10 March 1973) was a German-born, American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for a series of stylish, unpretentious Hollywood films noirs he made in the 1940s.
Siodmak (pronounced SEE-ODD-MACK) was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of Rosa Philippine (née Blum) and Ignatz Siodmak. His parents were both from Jewish families in Leipzig (the myth of his American birth in Memphis, Tennessee was necessary for him to obtain a visa in Paris during World War II). He worked as a stage director and a banker before becoming editor and scenarist for Curtis Bernhardt in 1925 (Bernhardt would direct a film of Siodmak's story "Conflict" in 1945). At twenty-six he was hired by his cousin, producer Seymour Nebenzal, to assemble original silent movies from stock footage of old films. Siodmak worked at this for two years before he persuaded Nebenzal to finance his first feature, the silent chef d'oeuvre, "Menschen am Sonntag" ("People on Sunday") in1929. The script was co-written by Billy Wilder and Siodmak's brother Curt Siodmak, later the screenwriter of "The Wolf Man" (1941). It was the last German silent and also included such future Hollywood artists as Fred Zinnemann, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Eugen Schufftan. His next film--the first at UFA to use sound--was the 1930 comedy "Abschied" for writers Emeric Pressburger and Irma von Cube, followed by "Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht," another comedy, yet quite different and unusual, a likely product of Billy Wilder's imagination (remade a noir, "DOA," in 1950). But in his next film, the crime thriller "Stürme der Leidenschaft," with Emil Jannings and Anna Sten, Siodmak found a style that would become his own.
With the rise of Nazism and following an attack in the press by Hitler's minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels in 1933 after viewing "Brennendes Geheimnis" ("The Burning Secret"), Siodmak left Germany for Paris. His creativity flourished, as he worked for the next six years in a variety of film genres, from comedy ("Le sexe fable" and "La Vie Parisienne" ) to musical ("La crise est finie," with Danielle Darrieux) to drama ("Mister Flow," "Cargaison blanche," "Mollenard"--compare Gabrielle Dorziat's shrewish wife with that of Rosalind Ivan's in "The Suspect"--and the superb "Pièges," with Maurice Chevalier and Erich Von Stroheim). While in France, he was well on his way to becoming successor to Rene Clair, until Hitler again forced him out. Siodmak arrived in Hollywood in 1939, where he made 23 movies, many of them widely popular thrillers and crime melodramas, which critics today regard as classics of film noir.
Beginning in 1941, he first turned out several B-films and programmers for various studios before he gained a seven-year contract with Universal Studios in 1943. The best of those early films are the thriller "Fly by Night" in 1942, with Richard Carlson and Nancy Kelly, and in 1943 the touching weepie "Someone to Remember," with Mable Paige in a signature role. As house director, his services were often used to salvage troublesome productions at the studio. On Mark Hellinger's production "Swell Guy" (1946), for instance, Siodmak was brought in to replace Frank Tuttle only six days after completing work on "The Killers." Siodmak worked steadily while under contract, overshadowed by high profile directors, like Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had been often compared by the press.
At Universal, Siodmak made yet another B-film, "Son of Dracula"(1943), the third and best in a trilogy of Dracula movies (based on his brother Curt's original story). His second feature, and first A-film, was the Maria Montez/Jon Hall vehicle, "Cobra Woman" (1944), made in garish Technicolor (Montez's cobra dance alone is worth the price of admission).
His first all-out noir was "Phantom Lady" (1944), for staff producer Joan Harrison, Universal's first female executive and Alfred Hitchcock's former secretary and script assistant. A classic, however flawed, it showcased Siodmak's skill with camera and editing to dazzling effect, but no more so than in the iconic jam-session sequence with Elisha Cook Jr. in throes on the drums. Following the critical success of "Phantom Lady," Siodmak directed "Christmas Holiday" (1944) with Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly (Hans J. Salter received an Oscar nomination for best music). Beginning with this film, his work in Hollywood attained the stylistic and thematic characteristics that are evident in his later noirs. "Christmas Holiday," adapted from a W. Somerset Maugham novel by Herman J. Mankiewicz, was Durbin's most successful feature, which she considered her only good film (and that Mankiewicz said was among his work in the 40s of which he was most proud). Siodmak's use of black-and-white cinematography and urban landscapes, together with his light-and-shadow designs, formed the basic structure of classic noir films. In fact, he often collaborated with cinematographers, such as Nicholas Musuraca, Elwood Bredell, and Franz Planer, to achieve in his films the Expressionist look he had cultivated in his early years at UFA (for "Christmas Holiday," he instructed Bredell in the use of deep-focus photography, which Gregg Toland had perfected for "Citizen Kane"). During Siodmak's tenure, Universal made the most of the noir style in "The Suspect," "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" and "The Dark Mirror," but the capstone was "The Killers" in 1946, Burt Lancaster's film debut and Ava Gardner's first dramatic, featured role. A critical and financial success, it earned Siodmak his only Oscar nomination for direction in Hollywood (his German production "The Devil Strikes at Night" ("Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam"), based on the true story of serial killer Bruno Lüdke, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957). While still under contract at Universal, Siodmak worked on loan out to RKO for the thriller "The Spiral Staircase," which he edited freely, without taking screen credit. For 20th Century Fox and producer Darryl F. Zanuck, he directed, partly on location in New York City, the crime noir "Cry of the City" in 1948, and in 1949 for MGM he tackled its lux production "The Great Sinner," but the prolix script proved unmanageable for Siodmak who relinquished direction to the dependable and bland Mervyn LeRoy. On loan out to Paramount in 1949, he made for producer Hal B. Wallis his penultimate American noir "The File on Thelma Jordan," with Barbara Stanwyck at her most fatal--and sympathetic. That she can be both is owed entirely to Siodmak who saw in this film a thematic link with "The Suspect" and "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry," with the failed lovers of these films and significantly their tragic conclusions (ten years later he addressed the same theme in "The Rough and the Smooth"). Perhaps his finest American noir--although not his last--is "Criss Cross" that was to reunite him not only with Lancaster, but also "The Killers" producer Mark Hellinger, who died suddenly before production began in 1949. Working without the hands-on control of Hellinger again, Siodmak was able to make this film his own as he could not the earlier film. Yvonne De Carlo's working-class femme fatal (a high mark in her career) completes the deadly triangle, along with Lancaster and Dan Duryea: the archetype of doomed attraction central to all Siodmak's noirs, but the one he could fully express to its nihilistic conclusion.
Siodmak immersed himself in the creative process and genuinely loved working with actors; in fact, he was considered an actor's director, discovering Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Curtis, Debra Paget, Maria Schell, Mario Adorf, and skillfully directing actresses, such as Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Dorothy McGuire, Yvonne de Carlo, Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Ella Raines.[1]
He directed Charles Laughton (a close friend) and George Sanders, actors with indelible personas, and got from both perhaps the unlikeliest, most natural and under-played performances of their careers. He managed with Lancaster to capture a youthful vulnerability--despite the actor's age (he was 33)--that, watching him in "The Killers," surprises us even today. He accomplished the impossible and got a believable, dramatic performance from Gene Kelly who never before or since looked so (intentionally) frightening on screen. But above all, it must be acknowledged, he made audiences sit up and notice Ava Gardner and her potential to ruin men.
Before leaving Hollywood for Europe in 1952, following the problematic production "The Crimson Pirate" for Warner Bros. and producer Harold Hecht, his third and last film with Burt Lancaster (Siodmak dubbed the chaotic experience "The Hecht Follies"), Siodmak had directed some of the era's best films noirs (twelve in all), more than any other director who worked in that style. However, his identification with film noir, generally unpopular with American audiences, may have been more of a curse than a blessing.
He often expressed his desire to make pictures "of a different type and background" than the ones he had been making for ten years. Nevertheless, he ended his Universal contract with one last noir, the disappointing "Deported" (1951) which he filmed partly abroad (Siodmak was among the first refugee directors to return to Europe after making American films). The story is loosely based on the deportation of gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Siodmak had hoped Loretta Young would star, but settled for the Swedish actress Marta Toren.
Those "different type" of films he had made--"The Great Sinner" (1949) for MGM, "Time Out of Mind" (1947) for Universal (which Siodmak also produced), "The Whistle at Eaton Falls" (1951) for Columbia Pictures (Ernest Borgnine's debut and Dorothy Gish's return to the screen)--all proved ill-suited to his noir sensibilities (although in 1952 "The Crimson Pirate," despite the difficult production, was a surprising and pleasing departure--in fact, Lancaster believed it was inspiration for the tongue-in-cheek style of the James Bond films).
The five months he collaborated with Budd Schulberg on a screenplay tentatively titled "A Stone in the River Hudson," an early version of "On the Waterfront," was also a major disappointment for Siodmak. In 1954 he sued producer Sam Spiegel for copyright infringement. Siodmak was awarded $100,000, but no screen credit. His contribution to the original screenplay has never been acknowledged.
Siodmak's return to Europe in 1954 with a Grand Prize nomination at the Cannes Film Festival for his remake of Jacques Feyder's "Le grand jeu" proved a misstep, despite its stars, Gina Lollobrigida (two of them) and Arletty in the role originated by Françoise Rosay, Feyder's wife. In 1955, Siodmak returned to the Federal Republic of Germany to make "Die Ratten," with Maria Schell and Curd Jurgens, winning the Golden Berlin Bear at the 1955 Berlin Film Festival. It was the first in a series of films critical of his homeland, during and after Hitler, which included the remarkable "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam," both thriller and social artifact of Germany under Nazi rule, shot in documentary style reminiscent of "Menschen am Sontag" and "Whistle at Eaton Falls," and in 1960, "Mein Schulfreund," an absurdist comedy, dark and strange, with Heinz Ruhmann as a postal worker attempting to reunite with childhood friend Hermann Goering. Between these films, and "Mein Vater, der Schauspieler" in 1956, with O. W. Fischer (the German Rock Hudson), he took a detour into Douglas Sirk territory with the sordid melodrama, "Dorothea Angermann" in 1959, featuring Germany's star Ruth Leuwerik. Later the same year he left Germany for Great Britain to film "The Rough and the Smooth," with Nadja Tiller and Tony Britton, yet another noir, but much meaner and gloomier than anything he had made in America (compare its downbeat ending with that of "The File on Thelma Jordan"). He followed with "Katia" also in 1959, a tale of Czarist Russia, with twenty-one-year-old Romy Schneider, mistakenly titled in America "The Magnificent Sinner," recalling--unfavorably--Siodmak's other costume melodrama. In 1961, "L'affaire Nina B," with Pierre Brasseur and Nadja Tiller (again), returned Siodmak to familiar ground in a slick, black-and-white thriller about a pay-for-hire Nazi hunter, which could be argued was the start of the many spy themed films so popular in the 1960s. In 1962, the entertaining "Escape from East Berlin," with Don Murray and Christine Kaufman, had all the characteristic style of a Siodmak thriller, but was one that he later dismissed as something he had made for "little kids in America." His work in Germany returned to programmers like those that had begun his career in Hollywood 23 years earlier. From 1964-1965, he made a series of films with former Tarzan Lex Barker: "Der Schut," "Der Schatz der Azteken," and "Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes," all taken from the western, adventure novels of Karl May and made for little kids in both Germany and America.
His return to Hollywood film-making in 1967 to make the wide-screen western "Custer of the West" was another disappointment (it had been a project originally intended for Akira Kurosawa). With Robert Shaw in the title role and his wife Mary Ure as Mrs. Custer, it is the oddest of the Custer film biographies, yet interesting in its contemporary portrayal of Custer's anti-social individualism.
He ended his career with a six-hour, two-part toga and chariot epic, "Kampf um Rom" (1968), a more campy work (perhaps intentionally) than "Cobra Woman" had been. There was a brief and profitable foray into television in Great Britain with the series "O.S.S." (1957-58). Siodmak was last seen publicly in an interview for Swiss television at his home in Ascona in 1971. He died alone in 1973 in Locarno, seven weeks after his wife's death.
The British Film Institute ran a retrospective of his career in April and May of 2015.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
Herbert Grönemeyer was born on 12 April 1956 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. He is a music artist and actor, known for Das Boot (1981), The American (2010) and A Most Wanted Man (2014). He was previously married to Anna Henkel-Grönemeyer.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Max Richter was born on 22 March 1966 in Hamelin, Lower Saxony, West Germany. He is a composer and actor, known for Arrival (2016), The Leftovers (2014) and Ad Astra (2019).- Actress
- Producer
Maria Simon was born on 6 February 1976 in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic [nox Saxony, Germany]. She is an actress and producer, known for Good Bye Lenin! (2003), Portrait of a Married Couple (2002) and Kleine Schwester (2004). She was previously married to Bernd Michael Lade.- Actress
- Composer
- Music Department
Lena Meyer-Landrut was born on 23 May 1991 in Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress and composer, known for What a Man (2011), Lena: If I Wasn't Your Daughter (2017) and Lena: Thank You (2018). She has been married to Mark Forster since 2020. They have one child.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Nora Fingscheidt was born on 17 February 1983 in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is a director and writer, known for System Crasher (2019), The Unforgivable (2021) and Ohne diese Welt (2017).- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Mathieu Carrière was born on 2 August 1950 in Hanover, Lower Saxony, West Germany. He is an actor and writer, known for La maison des bories (1970), Young Törless (1966) and Quantum Leap (1989).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Born in 1973 in Hannover, Germany, Dennis Gansel studied at Munich Film School HFF. Remarkably his first feature length movie Das Phantom (2000) was shot while he was still studying. Between his movies Girls on Top (2001), Before the Fall (2004) and The Wave (2008) he spent a long time struggling for the budget of the films. During these times he shot commercials. Dennis Gansel lives in Berlin.- Marlene Tanczik was born in 1993 in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. She is an actress, known for Paradise (2023), Never Look Away (2018) and Schneller als die Angst (2022).
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Detlef Bothe was born on 24 July 1965 in Brunswick, Lower Saxony, Germany. He is an actor and writer, known for Anthropoid (2016), Feiertag (2002) and Spectre (2015).- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Marleen Lohse was born on 28 February 1984 in Soltau, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress and writer, known for The Fifth Estate (2013), Cleo (2019) and Frauen, die Geschichte machten (2013).- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Sebastian Schipper was born on 8 May 1968 in Hanover, Lower Saxony, West Germany. He is an actor and director, known for Victoria (2015), Roads (2019) and The English Patient (1996).- Jan Krauter was born on 13 December 1984 in Wilhelmshaven, Lower Saxony, West Germany. He is an actor, known for Zwischen Himmel und Hölle (2017), Grzimek (2015) and Tatort (1970).
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Dieter Schidor was born on 6 March 1948 in Bienrode [now Brunswick], Lower Saxony, Germany. He was an actor and producer, known for Cross of Iron (1977), Kurze Kindheit, langer Abschied (1987) and Group Portrait with a Lady (1977). He was married to Michael McLernon. He died on 17 September 1987 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Lars Rudolph was born on 18 August 1966 in Wittmund, Lower Saxony, Germany. He is an actor and composer, known for Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), Look Who's Back (2015) and Run Lola Run (1998).- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Jan Josef Liefers was born on 8 August 1964 in Dresden, East Germany [now Saxony, Federal Republic of Germany]. He is an actor and director, known for Tatort (1970), The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) and The Tower (2012). He has been married to Anna Loos since 5 August 2004. They have two children. He was previously married to Aleksandra Tabakova.- Natalie O'Hara was born on 17 December 1976 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress, known for Der Bergdoktor (2008), Beyond the Sea (2004) and Rosamunde Pilcher (1993).
- Simone Thomalla was born on 11 April 1965 in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic [nox Saxony, Germany]. She is an actress, known for Tatort (1970), Frühling (2011) and Am Anfang war der Seitensprung (1999). She was previously married to André Vetters.
- Subaru Kimura was born on 29 June 1990 in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic [nox Saxony, Germany]. He is an actor, known for Transformation Lessons: Let's Star Change Together! (2017), Gekijôban Dôbutsu Sentai Jûôjâ Tai Ninninjâ Mirai kara no Messêji Furomu Sûpâ Sentai (2017) and Chou Super Hero Taisen: Kamen Rider vs. Super Sentai (2017).
- Actor
- Writer
Wolf Roth was born on 30 August 1944 in Torgau, Saxony, Germany. He is an actor and writer, known for Holmes & Watson (2018), Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) and Das Erbe der Guldenburgs (1987). He has been married to Barbara May since 1984. They have one child.- Writer
- Director
- Actress
Dörrie completed her schooling at a humanistic high school, from which she graduated in 1973 with her Abitur. In the same year he spent two years in the USA. There she studied film and acting at the Drama Department at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. This was followed by studies at the New School of Social Research in New York. She also worked in cafés and as a projectionist in the Goethe House in New York. In 1975 she returned to Germany. She then studied at the University of Television and Film in Munich. At the same time, she worked as a film critic journalist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Her final film is entitled "The First Waltz" and was broadcast on Bavarian television as "Max and Sandie". Doris Dörrie made various documentaries until 1982. In 1983 she made her first feature film in Munich called "Mitten ins Herz". Three years later she had a cinema hit with the title "Men". The well-known actors Uwe Ochsenknecht and Heiner Lauterbach star in the chaotic relationship comedy. The play became the most successful German film of 1986. Doris Dörrie was married to Helge Weindler from 1988 to 1996. Their daughter Carla was born in 1990.
In 1991 she had another cinema success with the title "Happy Birthday, Turk". She filmed the novel by the German writer Jakob Arjouni, a novel in the Kayankaya series. The witty film is in the tradition of classic detective films and tells the story of the search for a missing person in the Frankfurt milieu. The Turkish private detective Kayankaya, played by Hansa Czypionka, experiences police corruption. In 1994, Doris Dörrie shot the comedy film "Nobody Loves Me" with Maria Schrader. This production is about personal happiness. The work was honored with the silver film ribbon, the leading actress Maria Schrader with the gold film ribbon.
Her other film works include "No Trace of Romanticism" from 1980, "Between" from 1981, "Love in Germany" from 1989 and "Enlightenment Guaranteed" from 1999. Among all her film works The director also wrote the script herself. The films were often cast with well-known actors such as Senta Berger, Gottfried John or Uwe Ochsenknecht. She also shot the documentary entitled "What can it be?" In addition to her role behind the camera, she also performed guest roles in front of the camera. For example, she played in the film "The Leading Man" from 1977 or in "King Kong's Fist" and in "Back to Go" from 2000.
In addition to her film work, Doris Dörrie realized literary projects. This is how the short stories entitled "Love, Pain and All the Damned Stuff" and "What Do You Want from Me?" were created. She also wrote the short story "The Man of My Dreams" and the novel "What Do We Do Now?" In 1991 her collection of short stories entitled "Forever and Ever" was created. The 300-page work was well received by critics. In 2002 her film work entitled "Naked" and her novel "Happy" followed. In 2005 she staged Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Rigoletto" at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich under the musical direction of Zubin Mehta.
In the same year, 2005, she directed Giacomo Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" at the Gärtnerplatztheater. At the Salzburg Festival in 2006 she staged Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "La finta Giardiniera".- Actor
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Rainer Sellien was born on 6 November 1963 in Celle, Lower Saxony, Germany. He is an actor and writer, known for The Reader (2008), Unknown (2011) and All the Money in the World (2017).- Cinematographer
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Robert Brinkmann was born on 20 November 1961 in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany. He is a cinematographer and director, known for The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), The Cable Guy (1996) and The Rules of Attraction (2002). He has been married to Olive Kim since December 2009. He was previously married to Mena Suvari.- Music Department
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Richard Wagner was a German composer best known for his operas, primarily the monumental four-opera cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen". He was born Wilhelm Richard Wagner on May 22, 1813, in Leipzig, Germany. He was the ninth child in the family of Carl Wagner, a police clerk. Richard was only six months old when his father died, and he was brought up by his mother Johanna and stepfather Ludwig Geyer, an actor and playwright. Young Wagner studied piano from the age of 7 and soon developed ability to play by ear and improvise. At age 15 he wrote piano transcriptions of Ludwig van Beethoven's "9th Symphony" and orchestral overtures. He studied at the University of Leipzig, and also took composition and conducting lessons with the cantor of St. Thomas in Leipzig.
Wagner's early operas did not meet with success, leaving him in serious financial difficulties. From 1836-1839 he was a music director in Riga Opera, where his wife, Minna Planer, was a singer, and her extramarital escapades were the talk of the town. The Wagners amassed such significant debts that they had to escape from creditors and fled Riga. They spent 1840 and 1841 in London and Paris, where Richard worked as an arranger for other composers.
Giacomo Meyerbeer promoted Wagner's third opera, "Rienzi", to performance by the Dresden Court Theatre, where the opera was staged to considerable acclaim. In 1842 the Wagners moved to Dresden and lived there for six years. Eventually Richard was appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. At that time he completed and staged "Der fliegende Hollander" (aka "The Flying Dutchman") and "Tannhauser".
Wagner was exposed to many conflicting political influences, ranging from Marxism and liberalism on the left to German nationalism on the right to the anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin. After the revolution of 1848-49, Wagner fled from Germany to Paris, then to Zurich, and found himself penniless, unemployed and depressed (he had also suffered from a severe skin infection for many years). At that time Wagner was unable to compose or perform music, and he expressed himself in writing essays: "The Art-Work of the Future", describing "Gesamtkunstwerk," or "total artwork" uniting opera, ballet, visual arts and stagecraft.
Wagner's four "Ring" operas gradually evolved, and he completed the libretto by 1852. Another year of suffering went by, until he began composing "Das Rheingold" (aka "The Rhine Gold") in November 1853, following it with "Die Walkure" (aka "The Valkyrie") in 1854. In 1856 he began work on "Siegfried", but put the unfinished opera aside and focused on his new idea: "Tristan und Isolde" (aka "Tristan and Isolde"), which was composed between 1857 and 1859. In 1861 Germany ended the political ban on Wagner, and in 1862 he ended his troubled marriage to Minna.
"Tristan and Isolde" was initially accepted for production in Vienna. The opera had over 70 rehearsals between 1861 and 1864, but remained unperformed and gained a reputation for being unplayable. The young Bavarian King Ludwig II, an admirer of Wagner's operas since his childhood, had settled the composer's debts and financed his opera productions. Finally "Tristan and Isolde" was produced in Munich, and premiered under the baton of Hans von Bulow in June 1865. It was the first Wagner premiere in 15 years.
Cosima von Bulow, the wife of the conductor, Hans von Bulow, and the eldest daughter of pianist/composer Franz Liszt, had an indiscreet affair with Wagner, and their illegitimate daughter, Isolde, was born in 1865. The affair scandalized Munich, and Wagner fell into disfavor among members of the court who were jealous of his friendship with the king. Ludwig was pressured to ask Wagner to leave Munich. However, from 1866 to 1872 the king placed Wagner and his family at Tribshen villa on Lake Luzern, Switzerland. There Richard married Cosime in August 1870. Inspired composer created one of his most beloved works, the "Siegfried Idyll" for 15 players, written as a gift to Cosima, and premiered on Christmas day, 1870.
In 1872 Wagner moved to Bayreuth with a plan that his "Ring" cycle to be performed in a new, specially designed opera house. King Ludwig supported the composer with another large grant in 1874, and the Wagners bought Villa Wahnfried and made permanent home in Bayreuth. In August 1876 the new opera "Festspielhaus" opened with the premiere of "The Ring" and has been the site of the Bayreuth Festival ever since.
Richard Wagner died of a heart attack on February 13, 1883, while wintering in Venice. He was laid to rest in the garden of his Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth. The Wagner Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, is now a museum of period musical instruments and art collection of the Wagner family. One room is dedicated to the history of the Wagner Festivals in Lucerne. The Wagner Museum allows visitors to take photos of the documents about the Wagner family's help to the Jewish musicians and intellectuals who fled the Nazi regime in the 1930s.
Documents reveal that the Wagner family were assisting Jewish musicians and intellectuals who fled the Nazi regime in finding employment in Switzerland and other lands, such as the USA and Palestine. Documents, photographs and letters illustrate the bold activity of Arturo Toscanini with Vladimir Horowitz and the Wagner family members in getting funds from the government of Benito Mussolini and using those funds to accommodate Jewish musicians and intellectuals under the umbrella of the annual Wagner Festival in Lucerne. The Wagner Festival Symphony Orchestra employed many Jewish musicians who later joined the Israel Philarmonic Orchestra (then known as the "Palestine Orchestra").- Micaela Schäfer was born on 1 November 1983 in Leipzig, German Democratic Republic [nox Saxony, Germany]. She is an actress, known for Look Who's Back (2015), Casting of Death (2015) and Holy Shit! (2022).
- Roman Knizka was born on 8 February 1970 in Bautzen, German Democratic Republic [now Saxony, Federal Republic of Germany]. He is an actor, known for Mein Bruder, der Vampir (2001), Paradise Mall (1999) and Dr. Molly & Karl (2008). He was previously married to Stefanie Mensing.
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German-born Sanny grew up in southern Spain and began making appearances as part of the local theatre community at eight years of age. She later moved to London, England attending "Hurtwood House" the boarding school that Emily Blunt, Hans Zimmer and Jack Huston also came from. During her early adult years, she moved to New York and financed her dreams of acting with her position as co-owner of the restaurant "Moomba". Once more, Sanny moved closer to where her acting dreams would be achieved: California. Her film and television work include the sci-fi western High Plains Invaders (2009) Unknown (2011) Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) and Underworld: Awakening (2012).- Marianne Bachmeier was born on 3 June 1950 in Sarstedt, Lower Saxony, Germany. She died on 17 August 1996 in Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
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Born February 23 1685 in Halle, Germany, he was christened "Georg Friederich Händel" but always signed his name "Georg Friedrich Händel". His father intended for him to go into law, but Händel studied music clandestinely and was eventually allowed to study under an organist. He achieved some success early on, and toured Italy in 1706. He briefly worked in Hannover before departing for London in 1711. While in England Händel composed a number of anthems, operas, and church music, and in 1723 he became a British citizen. He premiered "Messiah" in Ireland as a charity aid, and this quickly became his most famous work. He died early in the morning on 14 April 1759, and was buried in Westminster Abbey under a monument that reads: "George Frederic Handel". 3,000 people attended his funeral.