August Diehl

August Diehl has been an important figure in German film and theatre for almost two decades. He rose swiftly to fame through his role in Hans-Christian Schmid’s 23. His versatility has been demonstrated in films such as Kalt ist der Abendhauch, Tattoo, Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken, Lichter, Der neunte Tag, Freischwimmer, Dr Alemán, Buddenbrooks and the Oscar-winning film The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher). In 2009 he appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and in 2010 he appeared in Phillip Noyce’s Salt and Lars Kraume’s Die kommenden Tage with Daniel Brühl, Johanna Wokalek and Susanne Lothar. In 2011 he performed the role of Bernward Vesper in Andres Veiel’s debut feature film Wer wenn nicht wir, which was nominated for a German Film Award. In the same year he filmed Confession of a Child of the Century with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Pete Doherty, which received its premiere screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, and Layla Fourie (Pia Marias) and Night Train to Lisbon (Bille August), which were first screened at the 2013 Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival). His other cinema films include Der junge Karl Marx (Raoul Peck), Allied (Robert Zemeckis), A Hidden Life / Ein verborgenes Leben (Terrence Malik), Plan A (Yoav and Doron Paz), and, in 2021, Der Räuber Hotzenplotz (Michael Krummenacher), with which he reached a large audience of children and young people.

His television work includes Kabale und Liebe (Leander Haussmann) and television and streaming productions such as Parfum, Die neue Zeit and Der Pass. In 2023 and 2024 he made further international appearances in the films Sidonie in Japan with Isabelle Huppert (Élise Girard), Bonhoeffer (Todd Komarnicki), Disappearance (Kirill Serebrennikov) and La Tour de glace with Marion Cotillard (Lucile Hadžihalilović).

August Diehl’s theatre engagements have included appearances in Berlin, Hamburg, Zurich, Vienna and at the Salzburg Festival. He has starred in Die Möwe (The Seagull), Don Carlos, Der Jude von Malta (The Jew of Malta), Major Barbara and Der Prinz von Homburg, and worked with directors such as Luc Bondy, Klaus Michael Grüber, Peter Zadek and Andrea Breth. His triumphs in theatre collaborations with Andrea Breth have included Hamlet at the Burgtheater — for which he received the Nestroy Theatre Prize in 2014 — along with Das Geisterhaus (The House of the Spirits) and Eines langen Tages Reise in die Nacht (Long Day’s Journey Into Night) as well as Diese Geschichte von ihnen in 2019. He most recently appeared with the Berliner Ensemble in Yasmina Reza’s Drei Mal Leben (Life x 3).