Ben Becker

Becker reads the Bible at Katholikentag in 2008, Osnabrück

Ben Becker (born 19 December 1964 in Bremen) is a German film and theatre actor.

Life and work

Becker is the son of actress Monika Hansen and actor Rolf Becker. He is the brother of actress Meret Becker and the stepson of Otto Sander. His grandmother was the comedian Claire Schlichting. Becker is Jewish by his mother and grandmother, Monika Hansen and Claire Schlichting.

As a child, Becker participated in radio dramas and had several small roles in films. Between 1985 and 1987 he trained as an actor in the Berliner Schaubühne theatre. His first contract was with Ernst Deutsch Theater in Hamburg. Later he joined the Staatstheater Stuttgart (Stuttgart State Theatre), where he was mostly remembered for his role (1991–1992) as Ferdinand in Schiller's Intrigue and Love. Later, he worked with the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, and played the role of Tybalt in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in the Deutschen Schauspielhaus in Hamburg.

His first memorable role in cinema was in 1991, in the film Das serbische Mädchen, where he played the role of the arrogant German boyfriend of the pregnant Serbian heroine. His big break was in 1995 as Peter, who fell in love with a man, in Joseph Vilsmaier's Schlafes Bruder. In the film Comedian Harmonists he played the singer de.

In 1995 he created his own production of Sid & Nancy with his sister Meret in the main role. In 1999 he played the main role in the Maxim-Gorki-Theater's production of Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. In 2006 he played in the unique film, de, which consisted of a monologue.

Becker is also involved in music and owns a pub, the Trompete, in Berlin/Tiergarten. He has one daughter, Lilith (born in 2000), from partner Anne Seidel.

In 2008 Becker worked with the German band Schiller (band) (thus following in the footsteps of his stepfather Otto Sander), where Ben did spoken lyrics for the album Sehnsucht. One song is called "Nacht", a video of which can be seen on YouTube. The lyrics are a shortened version of a poem in German called Die Seele [1] that is attributed to Lord Byron. It appears to be a translation of the Byron poem, "When coldness wraps this suffering clay" s:When coldness wraps this suffering clay from the collection, Hebrew Melodies. The identity of the translator/author of Die Seele is unknown although the text may be from "Lord Byrons Werke In sechs Bänden" translated by Otto Gildemeister, 3rd Volume, Fifth Edition, Berlin 1903 (pages 134-135).

Selected filmography

Year	Title	Role	Director	Notes
1991	Das serbische Mädchen	Hans	de
1992	Rising to the Bait	Funke	Vadim Glowna
1995	Brother of Sleep	Martin	Joseph Vilsmaier
1996	Alles nur Tarnung	Harry Butzbach	de
	Samson and Delilah	Prince Sidqa	Nicolas Roeg	TV film
1997	Comedian Harmonists	de	Joseph Vilsmaier
1999	Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod	Hans Wieck	Rolf Schübel
	Der Einstein des Sex	Adolf Brand	Rosa von Praunheim
2001	de	Franz Sass	de
2006	de	Emanuel Goldfarb	Oliver Hirschbiegel
2010	Habermann	Koslowski	Juraj Herz
2012	de	Andreas Borchert	de

Awards

• 1997 Bavarian Film Award, Special Prize [2]

External links

• Ben Becker at IMDb