Ulrich Tukur

Ulrich Tukur was born on July 29, 1957, in Viernheim, Hesse. He grew up in Westphalia, Hesse, and Lower Saxony, completed his high school diploma in Boston as part of a student exchange program, and his Abitur in 1977 in Wedemark near Großburgwedel. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Tübingen to study German, English, and History. With a fellow student from his German seminar, he founded the "Floyd-Floodlight-Foyer-Band," with which they played Schlager and "makeshift jazz" from the 1920s and 30s in market squares and nursing homes. Inspired by an accordionist playing Mackie Messer in front of the Zimmertheater Tübingen, Tukur bought the first theater ticket of his adult life. When he saw the lead actor again the next day at the outdoor pool, surrounded by beautiful girls, he began to take an interest in acting himself. To his great surprise, he was accepted into the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart in 1980. In 1981, while still a student, he played the role of Willi Graf in Michael Verhoeven's film Die weiße Rose and was subsequently engaged by the Städtische Bühnen Heidelberg after completing his acting studies. "My studies were too humorless for me," he says. "But from the moment I got involved in practical work, I had fun – it was like an extended student joke. Until Zadek came, then it got serious again." The director cast him in 1984 as SS officer Kittel in Ghetto at the Freie Volksbühne Berlin and took him to the Hamburger Schauspielhaus the following year, where Tukur shone in numerous roles until 1995. In 1993, he produced, wrote, and starred in his murder revue Blaubarts Orchester at Schmidts Tivoli in Hamburg, followed four years later by the revue Einmal Casanova sein. From 1995 to 2003, he co-directed the Hamburger Kammerspiele as artistic director with Ulrich Waller, the director of these revues. (His successor was Dominique Horwitz, who had inspired Tukur to pursue this profession on stage and at the outdoor pool in Tübingen.) Already in 1995, five years after his record debut as a singer on the album Tanzpalast, he founded "Ulrich Tukur und die Rhythmus Boys," the "oldest boy band in the world." The quartet dedicates itself on numerous tours and recordings, such as Morphium or Musik hat mich verliebt gemacht, to both evergreens from the first half of the 20th century and original compositions. Alongside this, Tukur has enjoyed a fascinating film and television career, appearing in Costa-Gavras' Der Stellvertreter and Eden Is West, Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, then in 2006 as Stasi Lieutenant Anton Grubitz in the Oscar-winning film Das Leben der Anderen, and currently as Tatort commissioner Felix Murot. Ulrich Tukur has received numerous awards, including the Golden Bear, the Golden Camera, the Adolf Grimme Award, the German Television Award, and two German Film Awards. After having already narrated two successful audiobooks, he made his own literary debut in 2007 with Die Seerose im Speisesaal. Ulrich Tukur has two daughters from his first marriage, Lili and Marleen. He lives with his second wife, photographer Katharina John, and about two thousand shellac records on the island of Giudecca in the south of Venice.