Sebastian Koch


Sebastian Koch is a German television and film actor. He is known for roles in the 2007 Academy Award-winning film The Lives of Others, in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, and as Otto Düring in the fifth season of the Showtime series Homeland.

Childhood

Koch grew up in Stuttgart with his single mother. He originally wanted to be a musician, but a production of the artistic director Claus Peymann influenced him in the late 1970s to change his career aspiration to becoming an actor.

Career

Theatre

From 1982 to 1985, Koch studied at the renowned Otto Falckenberg School in Munich. In addition to his cinematic work, he played a diversity of different roles on stage. Koch portrayed amongst other Peer Gynt and Leonce in Leonce and Lena at the municipal theatre of Darmstadt. At the Schiller theatre in Berlin he played the character Roller in Schiller's The Robbers and Orest in Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris. A couple of years later, he took over the role the Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband in the playhouse Bochum under the direction of Armin Holz.

Film and television

Koch had his first TV appearance in 1980 in the 77th episode of the series Derrick, followed by an episode in the popular crime series Tatort in 1986. He acted in numerous thrillers like Der Mann mit der Maske, Die brennende Schnecke and in 1997 in Heinrich Breloer's two-piece ', in which he portrayed the role of Andreas Baader.
For the title role in ' and for his performance as the writer Klaus Mann in Heinrich Breloer’s docudrama The Manns – A Novel of the Century, he won respectively in 2002 the Adolf Grimme Award, one the most prestigious awards for German television. The latter was furthermore distinguished as "TV event of the year" with the German Television Award. Koch received in addition the Bavarian TV Award for the same movie.
His first international productions included the historical drama Napoleon, which Koch in appeared alongside Gérard Depardieu, John Malkovich and Isabella Rossellini and brought him more attention. He portrayed the youthful lover of Catherine Deneuve, Rodolphe Löwenstein, in Marie und Freud.
Koch has portrayed historically significant personalities, among Rudolf Höss in Costa-Gavras Hochhuth's adaptation Amen. He appeared in The Tunnel, a made-for-television German film about the idea of going underground by digging a tunnel shortly after the construction of the Berlin wall in 1961, and in Peter Keglevic’s historical drama Two Days of Hope about the uprising on June 17, 1953. Koch appeared in Stauffenberg ; and he played Albert Speer in Heinrich Breoler’s mini series Speer und Er in 2004 - his third collaboration with the director following Todesspiel and The Manns – A Novel of the Century. He received for his performance as the Nazi architect Albert Speer the German TV Award.
Sebastian Koch appeared in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's drama The Lives of Others in 2006 as one of the leading roles. He portrayed the playwright Georg Dreyman, who lived in East Germany with his lover, a dissident who was spied on and monitored. The movie received an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007 as well as the BAFTA Award, the César, and the German and European Film Award. Koch himself was nominated several times for his work in The Lives of Others and received the Globo d'oro for Best European Actor, The Quadriga, and the Bambi.
Paul Verhoeven’s movie Black Book was also shot in 2006. Koch played a Nazi Officer in occupied Holland who falls in love with a Jewish member of the resistance. Black Book celebrated its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.
After shooting the movie in 2007/2008, Koch appeared on camera for the international production of Jack London’s classic psychological adventure novel Sea Wolf, where Koch portrayed a lone despot of both brutal cruelty and longing romance. The shooting of this two-parter based on Nigel Williams’ script and under Mike Barker’s direction took place in Halifax, Canada. The mini series won the Directors Guild of Canada Award and Koch was nominated in 2010 for his role as Wolf Larsen for the international Emmy Award.
The shooting of the movie Manipulation took also place in 2008, with Koch and Klaus Maria Brandauer playing leading roles.
Koch was in 2010 the male title role in the English independent tragicomedy Albatross under the direction of Niall MacCormick. He played in addition the role of Prof. Bressler in the movie Unknown under the direction of Jaume Collet-Serra. In the summer of 2010 he took a guest role alongside Eva Green and Joseph Fiennes in the TV series Camelot from the Irish RT Film production, followed by the UFA production Bella Block - Stich ins Herz under the direction of Stephan Wagner, in which Koch played the role of Max Klöckner. As a host of the ZDF production Terra X, Koch presented the Cologne Cathedral, the Neuschwanstein Castle and the Dresden Frauenkirche.
In 2011, Koch appeared in the Czech production The Shadow of the Horse , in which Koch played the leading role of the investigator Zenk, whose mission is to win through one personal rival and through the regime of communist Prague in the 50s. In the German production adapted from Bernhard Schlink’s novel Das Wochenende in 2012, Koch portrays an amnestied RAF terrorist, who has a reunion with his old mates. In the same year Koch began shooting the Greek-Russian drama film God Loves Caviar based upon the true story of Ioannis Varvakis, played by Koch, a former pirate who moved up to being a Greek caviar merchant and eventual benefactor from Psara. The international cast also included Catherine Deneuve as Catherine the Great of Russia and John Cleese as Officer McCormick. Furthermore, Koch played the title role in Suspension of Disbelief, a thriller by Mike Figgis, which was followed by part 5 of the Die Hard movies, with Koch as Bruce Willis’ antagonist.
In 2013, Ridley Scott began working on The Vatican, a pilot episode for a Showtime series about intrigues concerning the Pope and mysteries and secrets within the Catholic Church. Koch played the role of the Vatican’s secretary Cardinal Marco Malerba, who is one of the true potentates of the inner circle.
In an Austrian production of Bertha von Suttner und Alfred Nobel - Eine Liebe für den Frieden, Koch portrayed Alfred Nobel in 2014, and in the French production Au nom de ma fille, based on a true story, Koch played Dieter Krombach, a German doctor who is accused of murdering his stepdaughter by her biological French father. The case had spanned 30 years and has caused considerable publicity because of the issues of French-German relations and vigilante justice it raised.
In 2014, Koch was also part of Steven Spielberg’s historical dramatic thriller Bridge of Spies about the negotiations of the release of spies between the East and West. Lawyer James B. Donovan is thrown into the centre of the Cold War and East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel is a key figure in the process. The movie premiered at the New York Film Festival and was nominated for the 2016 Academy Award for Best Picture.
The biographical romantic drama film The Danish Girl by Academy Award winner Tom Hooper is about one of the first known recipients of sex reassignment surgery. Koch portrays Kurt Warnekros, a doctor at the Dresden Municipal Women's Clinic, who was one of the first to carry out such operations. The cast furthermore includes Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander.
Subsequently, Koch filmed Fog in August, the first feature film to address the Nazis' euthanasia program and the hospital's staunch Nazi chief physician Werner Veithausen's way of dealing with the issue.
Eventually, in 2015, Koch began shooting the fifth season of the Showtime series Homeland about bipolar CIA Officer Carrie Mathison. After leaving the CIA Carrie now works for German billionaire Otto Düring, a philanthropist who uses the money his family made through affiliation with the Nazis to help struggling people around the world, including in volatile regions of the Middle East. Düring hires her to be his head of security in Berlin.

Audiobooks

Koch has frequently served as an interpreter of both literary and musical-literary audiobooks and live performances of such. Current projects include Schumann - Scenes of a marriage about the exchange of letters between Clara and Robert Schumann, and accompanied by Argentinean bandoneon virtuoso Roberto Russo Koch has also presented excerpts from The Player by Dostoyevsky. The premiere of a play reading of Rhapsody: A Dream Novel by Arthur Schnitzler - accompanied by compositions especially for jazz - took place at the Literature and Poetry Festival in Bad Homburg in 2011.
In 2012, he produced the audio book Koch is reading Heuss about speeches and letters by Theodor Heuss in collaboration with Cherbuliez Productions.
Koch twice lent his voice to the audiobook edition of Brigitte - Strong Voices. In 2007, he recorded the novel A perfect friend followed by the crime story On the twelfth day in 2014.

Personal life

He dated Carice van Houten from 2006–2009. He met her on the set of the film Black Book.

Filmography