Sebastian Koch is a German actor who portrays philanthropist and Carrie's boss Otto Düring on Homeland. He is best known in the United States for his role in the Oscar winning foreign language movie The Lives of Others.
Biography
Sebastian Koch was born on May 31, 1952 in Karlsruhe, Germany, and grew up in Stuttgart. His mother brought him up alone, and he spent some time in the children's home where she worked. From 1982 to 1985 Koch studied at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich, and performed during this time with the Theater der Jugend (Youth Theatre).
After appearing at the municipal theatres of Ulm and Darmstadt, Koch started appearing in Berlin theatres in 1990. There he acted in works including Schiller's The Robbers and Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris and Dirty Dishes by Nick Whitby. Besides numerous film and TV roles, Koch also made frequent cameos in popular German crime series during this time. Following his acclaimed portrayal of Andreas Baader in Heinrich Breloer's docudrama Todesspiel, he appeared in many full-length television dramas.
His breakthrough roles came in 2001 with the portrayal of the kidnapped Richard Oetker (son of industrialist Rudolf August Oetker) in Dance with the Devil – The Kidnapping of Richard Oetker, and of the writer Klaus Mann in Heinrich Breloer's docudrama The Manns – A Novel of the Century. Koch received the Adolf Grimme Award for both roles, and is the only actor to have won the award for two different productions in one year. For his portrayal of Hitler's would-be assassin, the title character in Jo Baier's Stauffenberg, Koch was nominated for the German Television Awards and the Grimme Award, and received the Golden Gong award from the media magazine Gong.
In 2004, Koch appeared in a Heinrich Breloer production for the third time. This time he played the Nazi architect Albert Speer in Speer und Er ("Speer and He", released as Speer and Hitler: The Devil's Architect). 2006 saw the premiere in German cinemas of the drama Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), winner of the 2007 Academy Award for best international film, in which Koch played a leading role.
From 2006 to 2007, he appeared at Bochum Theatre after a 12-year absence from the stage, playing Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. Again in 2006 he portrayed Reinhard Mohn in the film adaptation of his life.
Koch, along with Yuliya Snigir, appeared as Russian villains in the fifth film of the Die Hard series, A Good Day to Die Hard and he had a featured role in the 2015 film Bridge of Spies.
Filmography
- Transit (1991)
- The Duck Bros./Dog Days (1991-2011, franchise) - Stanley (voice)
- Cosimas Lexikon (1992)
- Hart to Hart: Two Harts in 3/4 Time (1995, TV film)
- Les alsaciens ou les deux Mathilde (1996, TV miniseries)
- Todesspiel (1997, TV film)
- Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod, a.k.a. Gloomy Sunday (1999)
- The Tunnel (2001, TV film)
- Der Tanz mit dem Teufel (2001, TV film)
- Die Manns – Ein Jahrhundertroman (2001, TV miniseries)
- Amen. (2002)
- Napoleon (2002, TV miniseries)
- Princesse Marie (2004, TV film)
- Stauffenberg, a.k.a. Operation Valkyrie (2004, TV film)
- Tödlicher Umweg, a.k.a. Deadly Diversion (2004)
- Speer und Er (2005, TV film)
- The Lives of Others (2006)
- Black Book (2006)
- The Shell Seekers (2006, TV film)
- At Any Second (2008)
- Effi Briest (2009)
- Sea Wolf (2009, TV film)
- Manipulation (2011)
- Unknown (2011)
- Camelot (2011, TV miniseries)
- Albatross (2011)
- Das Wochenende (2012)
- God Loves Caviar (2012)
- In the Shadow, a.k.a. Ve stínu (Czech title) (2012)
- Suspension of Disbelief (2012)
- A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
- October November (2013)
- The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013) (voice)
- Homeland (2015 - 2017, TV series)
- The Danish Girl (2015)
- Bridge of Spies (2015)
- Au nom de ma fille (2016)
- Fog in August (2016)
- Billionaire Ransom (2016)