Christian Berkel

Christian Berkel

Birth : 1957-10-28, Berlin, West Germany [now Germany]

History

Christian Berkel (born October 28, 1957) is a German actor. Berkel was born in Berlin, Germany. His father was a military doctor. From the age of 14 he lived in Paris where he took drama lessons with Jean-Louis Barrault and Pierre Berlin. He then trained at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin and appeared on stage in Augsburg, Düsseldorf, Munich, Vienna and at the Schiller Theatre, Berlin. He has appeared in many German television productions and secured a major role in the Academy Award-nominated film Downfall as Doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck. He has followed this with significant roles in the Paul Verhoeven directed Dutch movie Black Book and the big budget United States movies Flightplan, Valkyrie (in which he portrayed Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim) and the Academy Award-nominated Inglourious Basterds. He lives in Berlin with the actress Andrea Sawatzki, with whom he has two sons. He is also fluent in French and English. Description above from the Wikipedia article Christian Berkel, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Profile

Christian Berkel

Movies

Le Petit Blond de la casbah
Schächten
In the late 1960s, when the young Jewish businessman’s son Victor Dessauer fails to secure just punishment for the Nazi concentration camp commandant who tortured his parents, he resolves to take the law into his own hands.
Trügerische Sicherheit
Magnus Mittendorf
Sportabzeichen für Anfänger
Bertram Dinkler
Enfant Terrible
Interviewer
When 22-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder storms the stage of a small, progressive theatre in Munich 1967, and seizes the production without further ado, nobody suspects this brazen young rebel to become one of the most important post-war German filmmakers. Despite early setbacks, many of his films breakout at the most renowned films festivals and polarise audience, critics and filmmakers alike. His radical views and self-exploitation, as well as his longing for love, have made him one of the most fascinating film directors of this time.
The Magic Kids: Three Unlikely Heroes
Louis Ziffer
Vlad has just moved and joined one of the most famous magical schools in the world, where he meets fairies, witches, trolls and dwarfs. Him and his father are the first vampires in town, but he soon meets other special kids.
Scheidung für Anfänger
Christoph
What Doesn't Kill Us
Mark
As a divorced father of two teenage daughters, with a head-strong ex-wife for a best friend, too many peculiar patients to keep up with and a new dog, psychotherapist Max certainly doesn't need another challenge. But when Sophie, a compulsive gambler with a boyfriend problem, regularly shows up late for her appointments, she rocks his world in ways he's not ready for.
Elle
Robert
When Michèle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving family, all the while becoming engaged in a game of cat and mouse with her stalker.
Ein gefährliches Angebot
Michael Dithardt
Trumbo
Otto Preminger
The career of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo is halted by a witch hunt in the late 1940s when he defies the anti-communist HUAC committee and is blacklisted.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Udo
At the height of the Cold War, a mysterious criminal organization plans to use nuclear weapons and technology to upset the fragile balance of power between the United States and Soviet Union. CIA agent Napoleon Solo and KGB agent Illya Kuryakin are forced to put aside their hostilities and work together to stop the evildoers in their tracks. The duo's only lead is the daughter of a missing German scientist, whom they must find soon to prevent a global catastrophe.
Anti-Social
Philip
Central London, today; Dee is an anarchic street-artist confronting the system, Marcus is an armed robber on a jewellery store crime-wave. For the two brothers, being Anti-Social is a way of life.
Dreamgirls
Herr Hegemann
Parallel love stories of three young women in Berlin: Hannah - an unhappy attorney who sexually demeans herself in order to get at least some love and romance, Leni who runs a coffee shop and has just been ditched by her long term boyfriend, and Vivienne who ends up falling in love with a puppy-eyed pasta designer with 21 dogs.
Elly Beinhorn – Alleinflug
Ernst Udet
Business as Usual - Der Prophet fliegt mit
Pilot
Buddy
Dr. Küster
Inexperienced guardian angel, Buddy (Michael Herbig) arrives to assist Eddie (Alexander Fehling) with getting his life back on track, but instead only causes more chaos.
Totenengel - Van Leeuwens zweiter Fall
Dr. van der Meer
Das dunkle Nest
Pfarrer Dr. Gabriel Reinberg
The Last Employee
David Böttcher
The lawyer David (Christian Berkel) has taken a job after a long period of unemployment, he can not agree with his conscience. He will liquidate a company and dismissed all employees. Despite his qualms, he does it - for his wife Irina (Jule Ronstedt) and his son Simon. But David's objections seem to be justified: threatened a young woman (Bibiane Beglau), which was denounced by him, and followed him. When he angrily to her home goes to admonish her, he finds her dead body. But that's the nightmare does not end. From then on, David is convinced haunted by her spirit to be.
Der Mann mit dem Fagott
Heinrich Bockelmann
Bremen, 1891. Udo Jürgens' grandfather Heinrich strolls thoughtfully about the Christmas market. For days, the young man has suffered a momentous decision: should he emigrate to America or seek his fortune in Moscow? The touching performance of a street musician playing a Russian song on his bassoon gives him an unexpected decision-making aid. Henry sets off for Russia - and thus begins a fateful story that spans three generations and two world wars.
Inglourious Basterds
Proprietor Eric
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds, lead by Lt. Aldo Raine soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.
Leningrad
Vinkelmeyer
When in 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, their troops quickly besieged Leningrad. Foreign journalists are evacuated but one of them, Kate Davies, is presumed dead and misses the plane. Alone in the city she is helped by Nina Tsvetnova a young and idealist police officer and together they will fight for their own survival and the survival of the people in the besieged Leningrad.
Valkyrie
Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim
Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer.
Mogadischu
Bundeskanzler Helmut Schmidt
The incredible true story of Lufthansa Flight 181, which was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in October of 1977, and the noble efforts of stewardess Gabriele Dillmann (Nadja Uhl) to ensure the safety of the terrified passengers throughout the harrowing ordeal. When terrorists sympathetic to the cause of the German Red Army Faction seize control of the flight, German chancellor Helmut Schmidt refuses to negotiate. Meanwhile, terrorist leader "Captain Martyr Mahmud" grows increasingly agitated, and the Yemeni government refuses to let the plane land on their soil. After Captain Schumann (Thomas Kretschmann) makes an emergency landing in the sand, he is brutally executed in front of the passengers by "Captain Martyr Mahmud" (Said Taghmaoui), who then forces the co-pilot to fly the plane to Somolia. Once there, counter terrorism measures quickly get underway as the passengers brace themselves for the worst.
Miracle at St. Anna
Captain Eichholz
Miracle at St. Anna chronicles the story of four American soldiers who are members of the all-black 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Division stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II.
Haber
Fritz Shimon Haber
At the brink of World War I, Fritz Shimon Haber was Germany's greatest chemist. Haber's Nobel prize-winning synthetic fertilizers saved world's population from mass starvation. But as World War I broke out killing millions of German soldiers, the desperate German forces asks Shimon Haber to provide the army with new kind of weapon. Haber has already sacrificed his and his family's Jewish identity in order to become a respectable German citizen. With his decision to invent such a weapon, Haber was the first scientist in human history to unleash a weapon of mass destruction. Later he paid the ultimate price for his ambition as his wife Clara committed suicide and his invention was used for murdering millions of Jewish people during World War II.
Flame & Citron
Hoffmann
During Nazi occupation, red-headed Bent Faurschou-Hviid ("Flame") and Jørgen Haagen Schmith ("Citron"), assassins in the Danish resistance, take orders from Winther, who's in direct contact with Allied leaders. One shoots, the other drives. Until 1944, they kill only Danes; then Winther gives orders to kill Germans. When a target tells Bent that Winther's using them to settle private scores, doubt sets in, complicated by Bent's relationship with the mysterious Kitty Selmer, who may be a double agent. Also, someone in their circle is a traitor. Can Bent and Jørgen kill an über-target, evade capture, and survive the war? And is this heroism, naiveté, or mere hatred?
Der andere Junge
Jakob Wagner
Black Book
General Käutner
In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II, a Jewish singer infiltrates the regional Gestapo headquarters for the Dutch resistance.
Helen, Fred und Ted
Eduard 'Ted' Fröhlich
Eine Frage des Gewissens
Martin Beltz
Die Sturmflut
Innensenator Helmut Schmidt
Susanne, a meteorologist Hamburg, has detected signs of an incipient sea storm that could devastate the city. Although given the alarm, local authorities do not listen to their warnings. To ensure the magnitude of the tsunami, Susanne decided to move to an oil platform located offshore, which verifies that their dire predictions are to become reality, as the storm will soon reach the coast, threatening the lives of thousands of people.
Flightplan
Mortuary Director
Flying at 40,000 feet in a state-of-the art aircraft that she helped design, Kyle Pratt's 6-year-old daughter Julia vanishes without a trace. Or did she? No one on the plane believes Julia was ever onboard. And now Kyle, desperate and alone, can only count on her own wits to unravel the mystery and save her daughter.
Der Vater meiner Schwester
Dr. Klaus Merbold
Hexenküsse
Herbert Zauner
Feuer in der Nacht
Karl Winkler
A live broadcast TV-thriller by Kai Wessel.
Guys & Balls
Rudolf
Ecki is a sweet, closeted gay man who works in his family’s bakery and plays goalie in his small town’s soccer team. When he both loses the big game, and is caught flirting with another player, his homophobic teammates throw him out. He vows to return one day with an all-gay team that will grind the heteros into the dust, so he sets off to find his “dream team.” With the help of his nurse sister, Ecki scours local gay bars and eventually assembles a hilariously motley but endearing crew of misfits that includes a leather-daddy threesome, a femme Turk with Beckham fantasies, a secret straight guy in love with the sister, and a seriously cute nurse eager for some private play-time with the goalie. Ecki now has two problems – turning this bunch into a team, and facing his own fears regarding his first romance.
Downfall
Prof. Dr. Ernst-Günter Schenck
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
Soundless
Lang
Der Unbestechliche
Harald Kittler
Das Paradies ist eine Falle
Rudi
Safe Conduct
Alfred Greven
The film is about the French film industry from 1942 to 1944 during the Nazi occupation. The film focuses on assistant director and resistance fighter Jean Devaivre and screenwriter Jean Aurenche. Aurenche is on the move so that he doesn't have to write anything collaborationist. Devaivre is in dangerous political activity. Devaivre also works for the German production company Continental where he is respected. On the other hand, Aurenche's scriptwriting doesn't help how he lives and he is a womanizer which causes him to procrastinate.
Erste Liebe
Rolf Drost
The Experiment
Steinhoff, Häftling Nr. 38
Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence — a 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control.
Verzweiflung
Blondine sucht Millionär fürs Leben
Dietrich
Halt mich fest!
Axel
Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht
Richard
Your Best Years
Arzt
Sweet Little Sixteen
Thomas Reiner
Yes. It's a Chuck Berry song. You picked it up in your search engine covering Berry's obit.
Tod auf Amrum
Rolf Spiekermann
Inspector Rolf Spiekermann is committed and successful, but has many enemies in Hamburg's underworld and little time for his family. That's why his wife Elke and the children are looking forward to vacationing together in Amrum. Arriving on the idyllic island, Rolf falls victim to a treacherous attack. With the help of the young hitchhiker Olaf, he gets off lightly. Rolf feels at the mercy of an invisible opponent. Because the local police only investigates half-heartedly, he tries to find the perpetrators himself. But inspector Spiekermann has found that all his professional skills cannot help him.
Single sucht Nachwuchs
Vickys Alptraum
John
Simones Entscheidung
A drama directed by Ulrich Stark
Rossini
Weich
Zigeuner is on the hunt for the woman of his dreams, a woman who should also play the main role in the film. Meanwhile, ruthless producer Oskar Reiter wants to buy the film rights at all costs - and he is struggling for the love of the beautiful Valerie.
Lea Katz - Die Kriminalpsychologin: Einer von uns
Stelzer
Lautlose Schritte
Simon Sundermann
Das Tor des Feuers
Dr. Sander
Spur eines Zweifels
Jens Kolberg
Ein Herz für Laura
Ich, der Boss
Victor Mazza
Drei Frauen und (k)ein Mann
Patrick Lajonne
Gute Referenzen
Short film about a job interview.
Mutter, ich will nicht sterben!
Walter Gebhard
Den Teufel am Hintern geküßt
The astonishing life-story of “Lili Marleen“ composer Norbert Schultze.
Das Schicksal der Lilian H.
Josef
A wealthy businesswoman who tried to disinherit her unfaithful husband is murdered. The man's lover is convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence in a negligent business case. But the now in love lawyer sets out to convict the real culprits ...
Ein toter Spieler verläßt den Tisch
Writer
A card game continues until the bitter end.
Ein toter Spieler verläßt den Tisch
Director
A card game continues until the bitter end.
Münchhausens letzte Liebe
Wilhelm
Wallenstein
Schwedischer Hauptmann
Wind von Südost
Gernot
Das schöne irre Judenmädchen
Friedrich, Graf von Schwerin
Frau Jenny Treibel
Leopold Treibel
New Year's Eve
The young man
Encouraged by Fassbinder, with whom he became friendly after the then-enfant terrible of the German cinema visited him in Lugano, Sirk also did some teaching during the late 1970s at the film school in Munich, where he made three short films with his students.
The Serpent's Egg
Student
Berlin, 1923. Following the suicide of his brother, American circus acrobat Abel Rosenberg attempts to survive while facing unemployment, depression, alcoholism and the social decay of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
Eine Jugendliebe
Wolfgang
Der Mädchenkrieg
Karol Djudko
The three daughters of the Dessau merchant Sellmann move with their father to Prague in 1936, where he accepted a position as director of the Böhmische Landesbank. For the three different women begins a new life, which accompanies the film over a period of ten years.
Black Box
Erik Behr
The exits of a Berlin courtyard are blocked by the police due to an ambiguous event outside and a state of emergency occurs. Among the residents of the building, insecurities start to pump fear. Suspicion takes over panic, prejudices bring polarization and another question appears: Is the real danger coming from inside or outside?