Armin Mueller Stahl

Armin Mueller-Stahl was born in 1930 where he happened to be, that is, in Tilsit, a city in East Prussia, currently known as Sobetsk and belonging to Russia. His family enjoyed a good position, as his mother became a university professor and his father worked in a bank. The war, historical and political vicissitudes made him end up with his family, which would include five brothers, in Berlin, and his father had to fight in World War II, where he died two days before the end of it. Despite this panorama, Armin remembers that at that time he thought, like so many others, with the hope that “a new world, culturally alive” would be born from the ashes of that. After the war was over, he trained first as a violinist and then as an actor, his definitive dedication; and when the wall was raised, he would be on the eastern side.

Since 1956, Mueller-Stahl has become a regular presence in his country’s cinema and television, although these are productions that do not transcend the borders of East Germany, and in secondary roles, which are what he will do for almost throughout his career with enormous efficiency. After a five-year marriage with Monika Gabriel –they coincided in the comedy Ein Lord am Alexanderplatz (1967)-, he will marry again in 1973 with Gabriele Scholz, with whom he has a son, Christian, born that year. One of the best roles of this period is performed in Jakob, der Lügner (Frank Beyer, 1974), which takes place in a Jewish ghetto during the war, where the protagonist is played by Vlastimil Brodský. Curiously, he will repeat the same role in a Hollywood remake 25 years later,Illusions of a liar , this time with Robin Williams as the protagonist. Perhaps his most important main role is played in the long-running series Das unsichtbare Visier , “The invisible visor”, the Stasi’s response to the James Bond spy movies, which was on the air between 1973 and 1979, and where he already shows off his characteristic mustache. The regime pampered him with privileges such as official car and housing, and the press spoke of him as “the man with whom everyone would like to have a beer.”

However, Mueller-Stahl never joined the party, and will fall out of favor with the communist regime when he shows his support for singer Wolf Biermann. So in 1980 he packed his bags and went into exile in West Germany. Things were not easy, because the East Germans were left in the dark, and his son Christian will have a hard time. But he will work out, as Rainer Werner Fassbinder requires it for Lola (1981) and The Anxiety of Veronika Voss (1983). And other filmmakers from Eastern countries with a good disposition for the opening count on him, such as the Polish Andrzej Wajda – A love in Germany (1983) – and the Hungarian Istvan Szabó – Coronel Redl(1985)–. They are the first titles that return to the familiar actor before the moviegoer, who will always take him for someone of a certain age, since the films mentioned are made by him when he is already 50 years old.

Hollywood and its surroundings begin to claim him with the miniseries Amerika (1987), which imagines a United States occupied by the Soviet Union, and where he precisely plays a general of the occupiers. But the title that definitively puts it on the map of the movie mecca is Jessica Lange ‘s father accused of being a Nazi war criminal in The Music Box ( Costa-Gavras , 1989). It is the year in which the Berlin Wall falls and the international film market opens. The following year he is the patriarch of an immigrant family in deliciously romantic Avalon ( Barry Levinson )., 1990). He says of this role that it was the “herzstuck, the work done with the heart of my acting career” so identified he felt with the role of immigrant that “mixes the truly comic with the truly tragic.”

Jim Jarmusch recruits him for Night on Earth (1991) and Steven Soderbergh for Kafka (1992). This does not mean that he abandons European cinema, as the Dutchman George Sluizer directs him in a leading role in Utz (1992), which earns him no less than the Silver Bear for best actor in Berlin. Many years later the same festival would grant him a distinction for his entire career.

But his are and will continue to be secondary roles, such as the boxing trainer in South Africa in The Force of One ( John G. Avildsen , 1992) and Severo in The House of the Spirits ( Bille August , 1993), according to the novel by Isabel Allende . He can do a goofy family sitcom with Whoopi Goldberg , Dino Rex (1995), and the following year be nominated for a supporting actor Oscar in Shine ( Scott Hicks , 1996), where he’s partnered with Geoffrey Rush.the one who takes a golden statuette as the main actor. That year, as director and screenwriter, he directs himself by composing a centennial Adolf Hitler in Conversation with the Beast (1996), his only effort behind the camera, and which would have a lukewarm reception.

With his compatriot Volker Schlöndorff he makes The Ogre (1996), with the Polish Agnieszka Holland The Third Miracle (1999), and with the Canadian David Cronenberg Eastern Promises (2007). Among his most interesting commercial films are The Game ( David Fincher , 1997), The Peacemaker ( Mimi Leder , 1997), The International ( Tom Tykwer ) and a Dan Brown , Angels & Demons ( Ron Howard , 2009). And he has a recurring role in five episodes of The West Wing of the White House., as Israeli Prime Minister. Among the small roles, a big one arises from time to time, there is the challenge of embodying Thomas Mann in a 2001 miniseries, for a few years later, composing the patriarch of Los Buddenbrooks , based on the novel of the same name by this author.

His latest work is Knight of Cups (2015), a title little appreciated by critics despite being written and directed by Terrence Malick .