Sebastian Koch

Childhood

Koch grew up in Stuttgart with his single mother. He originally wanted to be a musician, but the production of the artistic director Claus Peymann influenced him in the late 70s to change his career aspiration in becoming an actor.

Theatre

From 1982 to 1985 Koch studied at the renowned Otto Falckenberg School in Munich. In addition to his cinematic work, he showed 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.

Films 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 Heinrich Breloer's two-piece Todesspiel, in which he portrayed the role of Andreas Baader.

For the title role in Dance with the Devil – The Kidnapping of Richard Oetker 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.

First international productions like the historical drama Napoleon, in which Koch played alongside Gérard Depardieu, John Malkovich and Isabella Rossellini brought him more attention. He portrayed the youthful lover of Catherine Deneuve, Rodolphe Löwenstein, in Marie und Freud.

Again and again Sebastian Koch has portrayed historically significant personalities, among Rudolf Höss in Costa-Gavras Hochhuth’s adaptation Amen (Der Stellvertreter). In The Tunnel, still the most successful 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. Sebastian Koch was Stauffenberg (2004 by Jo Baier and winner of the German Film Award); and he was 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, - for which he received for his performance as the Nazi architect Albert Speer the German TV Award.

Sebastian Koch played in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's drama The Lives of Others in 2006 one of the leading roles. He portrayed the playwright Georg Dreyman, who lived in East Germany with his lover, who was a dissident, who was spied on and monitored. The movie received an Oscar as Best foreign language film in 2007 as well as the BAFTA-Award , the César, and the German and European Film Award. Sebastian Koch himself was nominated several times for his extraordinary 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 (Zwartboek) was also shot in 2006. Koch plays a Nazi Officer in occupied Holland who falls in love with a Jewish member of the resistance (Carice van Houten). Black Book celebrated its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.

After shooting the movie In jeder Sekunde in 2007/2008, he was on camera for the international production of Jack London’s classic psychological adventure novel Sea Wolf, who Koch portrayed as a lone despot of both brutal cruelty and longing romance. The shooting of this two-parter after 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 (adapted from the novel Das Verhör des Harry Wind) took also place in 2008, with Sebastian Koch and Klaus Maria Brandauer as 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 (with Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger) under the direction Jaume Collet-Serra. In the summer of 2010 he took over a guest role next to 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, Sebastian Koch presented the Cologne Cathedral, the Neuschwanstein Castle and the Dresden Frauenkirche.

2011 was dominated by the Czech production The Shadow of the Horse (Ve Stinu), 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 by Bernhard Schlink’s novel Das Wochenende in 2012, Koch portrays an amnestied RAF terrorist (Jens Kessler) and his reunion with his old mates. In the same year began the shooting for the Greek-Russian drama film God Loves Caviar based upon the true story of Ioannis Varvakis played by Sebastian 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, Sebastian 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.

Another major collaboration began in 2013, when Ridley Scott (director and producer) began working on The Vatican, a pilot movie for a Showtime series about intrigues concerning the Pope, mysteries and secrets within the Catholic Church. Koch plays 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, Alfred Nobel was portrayed by Sebastian Koch in 2014, and in the French production Au nom de ma fille, based on a true story, for the big screen Sebastian Koch played Dieter Krombach, a German doctor who is accused of murdering his stepdaughter by her biological French father (played by Daniel Auteuil). The case has spanned 30 years and has caused considerable publicity because of the issues of French-German relations and vigilante justice it raised.

In 2014 Sebastian Koch was also part of Steven Spielberg’s historical dramatic Thriller Bridge of Spies about the negotiations of the release of spies between East and West. Lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) is thrown into the centre of the Cold War and East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel (Sebastian Koch) is a key figure in the process. The movie premiered at the New York Film Festival and was nominated for the 2016 Academy Awards as Best Motion Picture.

The biographical romantic drama film The Danish Girl by Academy Award winner Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) 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 (by director Kai Wessel), the first feature film to address the Nazis' euthanasia programme and the hospital's staunch Nazi chief physician Werner Veithausen's (played by Sebastian Koch) way of dealing with the issue.

Eventually in 2015 began the shooting for the fifth season of the Showtime series Homeland about bipolar CIA Officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes). After leaving the CIA Carrie now works for German Billionaire Otto Düring (Sebastian Koch), 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, who hires her to be his head of security in Berlin.

Audiobooks

Koch is furthermore much in demand as an interpreter of both literary and musical-literary audiobooks and live performances of such. Current projects include Schumann - Scenes of a marriage (with Martina Gedeck) about the exchange of letters between Clara and Robert Schumann, and accompanied by Argentinean bandoneon virtuoso Roberto Russo Sebastian Koch is also presenting excepts 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.

He already lent twice his voice to the audio book edition of Brigitte - Strong Voices. In 2007 he recorded the novel A perfect friend (Martin Suter) followed by the thrilling crime story On the twelfth day (Wolfgang Schorlau) in 2014.

Awards