Moritz Bleibtreu
German autograph card. Photo: Christian Schoppe.
Moritz Bleibtreu (1971) is a German actor, whose notable roles include Manni in Lola rennt/Run Lola Run (1998), Tarek Fahd in the psychological thriller Das Experiment/The Experiment (2001) and Andreas Baader in Der Baader Meinhof Komplex/The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008). More recently, he starred in the comedy Es war einmal in Deutschland.../Bye Bye Germany (2017) and the drama Roads (2019).
Moritz Johann Bleibtreu was born in 1971 in Munich, Germany. He was the son of Austrian-born parents, actors Hans Brenner and Monica Bleibtreu, and the great-grand-nephew of the actress Hedwig Bleibtreu. Bleibtreu grew up in Hamburg. His first appearance on TV was in the late seventies on a children's television series called Neues aus Uhlenbusch/News from Uhlenbusch (Rainer Boldt, 1980-1982), written by his mother Monica and Rainer Boldt. Alongside his mother he appeared in the miniseries Mit meinen heißen Tränen/Notturno (Fritz Lehner, 1986), starring Daniel Olbrychski. After he left school when he was 16, he lived in Paris and New York City where he attended acting school. In 1992, he began his acting career at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. He also had numerous small parts in television productions. In 1993 he played a supporting role in the TV series Schulz & Schulz, starring Götz George, which already showed his great versatility. In the 1990s he played some major television roles, but in 1998, he decided to "stop making TV movies because cinema is an active form of watching, whereas television is a passive one."
In the late 1990s, Moritz Bleibtreu appeared in two films which made him a star: the Road Movie Knockin 'on Heaven's Door (Thomas Jahn, 1997) with Til Schweiger and Bleibtreu as the comic gangster Abdul, and Lola rennt/Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998) with Franka Potente. The latter follows a woman who needs to obtain 100,000 Deutsche Mark in twenty minutes to save her boyfriend's life. Bleibtreu played the slightly dim boyfriend Manni. The film received critical acclaim and several accolades. Next, he starred as the idiot brother in the Russian film Luna Papa (Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov, 1999), shot in the Karakum region in Tajikistan. Then he starred in the German-Turkish road movie Im Juli/In July (2000), by filmmaker Fatih Akin. With Akin, he would also make the films Solino (Fatih Akin, 2002), Chiko (Özgür Yıldırım, 2008) and Soul Kitchen (Fatih Akin, 2009). An international success was the thriller Das Experiment/The Experiment (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2001), based on Mario Giordano's novel Black Box. The film deals with a social experiment which resembles Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment of 1971. A cult in Germany is the stoner film Lammbock (Christian Zübert, 2001). The protagonists are two pizza delivery men (Bleibtreu and Lucas Gregorowicz) who decide to up their income by adding marijuana to the menu and get into trouble after attracting the attention of an undercover cop. In 2017, the sequel Lommbock was made after many requests at Facebook. With Vanessa Redgrave, Bleibtreu starred in The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam (Kayvan Mashayekh, 2005) about the life of the famous Persian intellectual Omar Khayyám. In the United States, the film became a sleeper hit, playing in 14 US cities for nearly one year. He also played a small part in Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005).
Moritz Bleibtreu then played the lead in Elementarteilchen/The Elementary Particles/Atomised (Oskar Roehler, 2006) based on the novel Les Particules élémentaires by Michel Houellebecq. For this role, he was awarded in 2006 with the Silver Bear as the best performer of the Berlinale. Yhe following years he appeared in international productions like the American-British drama The Walker (Paul Schrader, 2007), starring Woody Harrelson, the Italian drama La masseria delle allodole/The Lark Farm (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 2007) about the Armenian Genocide, and the American sports action comedy Speed Racer (2008), written, co-produced and directed by the Wachowskis. A success was Der Baader Meinhof Komplex/The Baader Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel, 2008) with Martina Gedeck. The film is based on the book by Stefan Aust andretells the story of the early years of the West German far-left terrorist organisation the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction, or Red Army Faction, a.k.a. RAF) from 1967 to 1977. The film was nominated for the Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. He co-starred with Tobias Moretti in the historical dramaJud Süss – Film ohne Gewissen/Jew Suss: Rise and Fall (Oskar Roehler, 2010), dramatising the creation process of the antisemitic Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß (1940). It was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. In Italy, he appeared in the crime film Vallanzasca – Gli angeli del male/Angel of Evil (Michele Placido, 2010), starring Kim Rossi Stuart and based on the biography of bank robber Renato Vallanzasca. He had a small part in the American apocalyptic action horror film World War Z (Marc Forster, 2013), starring Brad Pitt. It is the highest-grossing zombie film of all time. he also appeared in the biographical thriller The Fifth Estate (Bill Condon, 2013) about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks with Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange. He also played supporting parts in the British drama Woman in Gold (Simon Curtis, 2015), starring Helen Mirren, and the Italian-French thriller Le confessioni/The Confessions (Roberto Andò, 2016), which stars Toni Servillo. More recently, he starred in the comedy Es war einmal in Deutschland.../Bye Bye Germany (Sam Garbarski, 2017) and the drama Roads (Sebastian Schipper, 2019). Moritz Bleibtreu lives in Reinbek near Hamburg. Since 2008, he is the father of a boy.
Sources: Andrea LeVasseur (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Moritz Bleibtreu
German autograph card. Photo: Christian Schoppe.
Moritz Bleibtreu (1971) is a German actor, whose notable roles include Manni in Lola rennt/Run Lola Run (1998), Tarek Fahd in the psychological thriller Das Experiment/The Experiment (2001) and Andreas Baader in Der Baader Meinhof Komplex/The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008). More recently, he starred in the comedy Es war einmal in Deutschland.../Bye Bye Germany (2017) and the drama Roads (2019).
Moritz Johann Bleibtreu was born in 1971 in Munich, Germany. He was the son of Austrian-born parents, actors Hans Brenner and Monica Bleibtreu, and the great-grand-nephew of the actress Hedwig Bleibtreu. Bleibtreu grew up in Hamburg. His first appearance on TV was in the late seventies on a children's television series called Neues aus Uhlenbusch/News from Uhlenbusch (Rainer Boldt, 1980-1982), written by his mother Monica and Rainer Boldt. Alongside his mother he appeared in the miniseries Mit meinen heißen Tränen/Notturno (Fritz Lehner, 1986), starring Daniel Olbrychski. After he left school when he was 16, he lived in Paris and New York City where he attended acting school. In 1992, he began his acting career at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. He also had numerous small parts in television productions. In 1993 he played a supporting role in the TV series Schulz & Schulz, starring Götz George, which already showed his great versatility. In the 1990s he played some major television roles, but in 1998, he decided to "stop making TV movies because cinema is an active form of watching, whereas television is a passive one."
In the late 1990s, Moritz Bleibtreu appeared in two films which made him a star: the Road Movie Knockin 'on Heaven's Door (Thomas Jahn, 1997) with Til Schweiger and Bleibtreu as the comic gangster Abdul, and Lola rennt/Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998) with Franka Potente. The latter follows a woman who needs to obtain 100,000 Deutsche Mark in twenty minutes to save her boyfriend's life. Bleibtreu played the slightly dim boyfriend Manni. The film received critical acclaim and several accolades. Next, he starred as the idiot brother in the Russian film Luna Papa (Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov, 1999), shot in the Karakum region in Tajikistan. Then he starred in the German-Turkish road movie Im Juli/In July (2000), by filmmaker Fatih Akin. With Akin, he would also make the films Solino (Fatih Akin, 2002), Chiko (Özgür Yıldırım, 2008) and Soul Kitchen (Fatih Akin, 2009). An international success was the thriller Das Experiment/The Experiment (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2001), based on Mario Giordano's novel Black Box. The film deals with a social experiment which resembles Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment of 1971. A cult in Germany is the stoner film Lammbock (Christian Zübert, 2001). The protagonists are two pizza delivery men (Bleibtreu and Lucas Gregorowicz) who decide to up their income by adding marijuana to the menu and get into trouble after attracting the attention of an undercover cop. In 2017, the sequel Lommbock was made after many requests at Facebook. With Vanessa Redgrave, Bleibtreu starred in The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam (Kayvan Mashayekh, 2005) about the life of the famous Persian intellectual Omar Khayyám. In the United States, the film became a sleeper hit, playing in 14 US cities for nearly one year. He also played a small part in Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005).
Moritz Bleibtreu then played the lead in Elementarteilchen/The Elementary Particles/Atomised (Oskar Roehler, 2006) based on the novel Les Particules élémentaires by Michel Houellebecq. For this role, he was awarded in 2006 with the Silver Bear as the best performer of the Berlinale. Yhe following years he appeared in international productions like the American-British drama The Walker (Paul Schrader, 2007), starring Woody Harrelson, the Italian drama La masseria delle allodole/The Lark Farm (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 2007) about the Armenian Genocide, and the American sports action comedy Speed Racer (2008), written, co-produced and directed by the Wachowskis. A success was Der Baader Meinhof Komplex/The Baader Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel, 2008) with Martina Gedeck. The film is based on the book by Stefan Aust andretells the story of the early years of the West German far-left terrorist organisation the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction, or Red Army Faction, a.k.a. RAF) from 1967 to 1977. The film was nominated for the Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. He co-starred with Tobias Moretti in the historical dramaJud Süss – Film ohne Gewissen/Jew Suss: Rise and Fall (Oskar Roehler, 2010), dramatising the creation process of the antisemitic Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß (1940). It was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. In Italy, he appeared in the crime film Vallanzasca – Gli angeli del male/Angel of Evil (Michele Placido, 2010), starring Kim Rossi Stuart and based on the biography of bank robber Renato Vallanzasca. He had a small part in the American apocalyptic action horror film World War Z (Marc Forster, 2013), starring Brad Pitt. It is the highest-grossing zombie film of all time. he also appeared in the biographical thriller The Fifth Estate (Bill Condon, 2013) about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks with Benedict Cumberbatch as its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange. He also played supporting parts in the British drama Woman in Gold (Simon Curtis, 2015), starring Helen Mirren, and the Italian-French thriller Le confessioni/The Confessions (Roberto Andò, 2016), which stars Toni Servillo. More recently, he starred in the comedy Es war einmal in Deutschland.../Bye Bye Germany (Sam Garbarski, 2017) and the drama Roads (Sebastian Schipper, 2019). Moritz Bleibtreu lives in Reinbek near Hamburg. Since 2008, he is the father of a boy.
Sources: Andrea LeVasseur (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.