Michael Hinz

Life and Career

Hinz came from an acting family, his parents were Werner Hinz and Ehmi Bessel, both actors, as well as his brother Knut and half-sister Dinah.

After growing up in Berlin and Hamburg, Hinz had his first theatrical role in 1958 in Terence Rattigan's The Sleeping Prince at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg. A year later, he starred in his first film, Die Brücke, which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 32nd Academy Awards.

Hinz also starred in numerous films, such as The Longest Day (in which he played Manfred Rommel, the son of his father's character Erwin Rommel), television series, and was the voice actor for Jeff Goldblum in The Ray Bradbury Theater and Scott Wilson in the 1967 film In Cold Blood. He is best remembered for playing Uncle Quentin in the British television series adaptation of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five in the late 1970s.

Hinz's first wife was the actress Ingrid van Bergen, with whom he had his first daughter Carolin van Bergen, who later also became an actress. In 1967, he met the actress Viktoria Brams. They were married from 1968 until Hinz's death in 2008.

In October 2008, Hinz was found unconscious by his wife at home in Munich as a result of a stroke, spending three weeks in a coma until his death on 6 November. His ashes were interred as the Westfriedhof in Munich.

Awards