Moritz Bleibtreu

Moritz Bleibtreu — Biography

Moritz Johann Bleibtreu was born on 13 August 1971 in Munich and grew up in Hamburg's St. Georg district; acting ran in the family, as his mother was the Austrian actress Monica Bleibtreu and his father the German-Austrian actor Hans Brenner, while his grandfather was the writer Renato Attilio Bleibtreu. He appeared on screen as a child in the series Neues aus Uhlenbusch, and after finishing secondary school in Hamburg spent time as an au pair in Paris, lived in Italy, and trained as an actor in New York.

After gaining stage experience at Hamburg's Thalia Theater and Schauspielhaus, he moved into television in 1993 and became widely known in 1997 for playing the gangster Abdul in Knockin' on Heaven's Door, quickly emerging as one of the most prominent faces of German cinema; he has since appeared in more than ninety films and television productions. He won the German Film Award for Das Experiment and Im Juli, took the Silver Bear for his performance in Atomised (2006), took on the role of Andreas Baader for The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), and lent his voice to Disney's Brother Bear films.

He returned to television in 2015 with ZDF's crime series Schuld, appeared two years later in Lommbock, the sequel to Lammbock, and made his directing debut in 2019-2020 with Cortex, in which he also played the lead. He married Saskia de Tschaschell in 2022 and continues to work on international productions such as Bye Bye Germany and The Confessions.