Daniel Brühl

Daniel César Martín Brühl González (born 16 June 1978) is a Spanish-German actor.

Daniel César Martín Brühl González was born on 16 June 1978 in Barcelona.

His father was the German TV director and documentalist Hanno Brühl, who was born in São Paulo, Brazil.

His mother is Marisa González Domingo, a Spanish teacher.

He was born in Spain because his mother did not trust German doctors.

Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Cologne, Germany, where he grew up.

He has a brother, Oliver, and a sister, Miriam.

They were raised speaking Spanish, German, Catalan, Portuguese and French.

He attended secondary school at the Dreikönigsgymnasium, the oldest school in Cologne.

Brühl began acting at a young age despite not having any formal training as an actor.

He participated in children's theater at school and first earned money at age 8 doing radio plays, followed by work in a dubbing studio leading to one of the dubbing actors to recommend the teenager to a talent agency.

At age 15, Brühl landed a small part in the TV film Svens Geheimnis, played the street kid Benji in the soap opera Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love)(1995), and continued to feature in television series in the following years.

In 1999, he appeared in his film debut as Checo in Paradise Mall (Schlaraffenland) and voiced Kom in the German version of Le château des singes. In 2000, he starred in his first main role as Markus Baasweiler in No More School (Schule), and was cast as Jay in Deeply.

He received his first German Film Award for Best Actor for his roles in Das Weisse Rauschen (2001), Nichts Bereuen (2001), and Vaya con Dios (2002).

In 2001, he continued to play main roles as the schizophrenic Lukas in Hans Weingartner's critically acclaimed debut film Das Weisse Rauschen (The White Sound), as Daniel in Nichts Bereuen (No Regrets), and as Marek in Honolulu.

In 2002, he starred as Arbo in Vaya con Dios and as boxer Marko Stemper in Elefantenherz (Elephant Heart).

He won the German Film Award (2002) for Best Actor, the Bavarian Film Award (2001) for Best New Actor, and the New Faces Award (2002) for Best Actor for his performance in Das Weisse Rauschen, Nichts Bereuen, and Vaya con Dios.

His starring role in the German film Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) received widespread recognition and critical acclaim, and garnered him the European Film Award for Best Actor and another German Film Award for Best Actor.

He won the German Film Critics Award (2003) for Best Actor for Das Weisse Rauschen and Vaya con Dios. For Das Weisse Rauschen, Brühl insisted on meeting someone with paranoid schizophrenia to avoid the risk of making the character look clichéd.

Two decades later, he still considers it his most difficult character to portray and comments that "It was important for me to explore my own madness, to believe in what I was doing and to convince myself that I was suffering from that disease, so it was quite difficult."

The film has been widely cited by the academic community in discussing and understanding schizophrenia due to its realistic portrayal.

Brühl's international breakthrough role came in 2003 as Alex Kerner in Wolfgang Becker's German tragicomedy Good Bye, Lenin! which tells about a German family that lived during the unification of Germany.

The film became one of the most successful German films to date, receiving nominations at the Golden Globe Awards and the BAFTA Awards and winning at the European Film Awards, German Film Awards, Cesar Awards, and London Film Critics' Circle among others.

It was sold to more than 65 countries, reaching an estimated six million cinema-goers worldwide.

In that year, Brühl won awards including the European Film Awards Peoples's Choice Award for Best European Actor and the European Film Award for Best Actor for the role.

He also won his second German Film Award as Best Actor for both his performance in the film and in Elefantenherz.

He then voiced Kenai in the German version of Brother Bear.

Brühl reached further recognition in 2004 reuniting with filmmaker Hans Weingartner and starring as the anti-capitalist activist Jan in the internationally successful film The Edukators (Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei).

The film became a cult film as part of a "German New Wave" and received a 10-minute standing ovation at its premier at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or.

Brühl earned a nomination for the European Film Award for Best Actor for his role.

At the same time, he won the European Film Awards Peoples's Choice Award for Best European Actor for his role as Paul in Love in Thoughts of which plot is based on the Steglitz student tragedy involving two teenagers who created a suicide club.

In the same year, Brühl made his English-speaking film debut in Ladies in Lavender, starring alongside English actresses Judi Dench and Maggie Smith as Andrea Marowski, and met Queen Elizabeth II who attended its premiere.

He also played Frank in Farland (film).

Brühl featured as Lieutenant Horstmayer of the German 93rd Infantry Regiment, a central character in the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, a trilingual World War I film based on the experiences of French, German and Scottish soldiers during the Christmas truce of 1914.

The film shows Brühl's linguistic ability as he ably communicates in German, French and English throughout.

In 2006, he was invited to be part of the short film and Cinéfondation juries of the Cannes Film Festival.

He was introduced to mainstream international audiences through his breakthrough performance as Fredrick Zoller, a Nazi German war hero in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), and appearances in films like The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Fifth Estate (2013), and A Most Wanted Man (2014).

Brühl received widespread critical acclaim and further recognition for his portrayal of former Formula 1 driver Niki Lauda in the biographical film Rush (2013), for which he earned nominations including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Critic's Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Brühl portrays Helmut Zemo in Captain America: Civil War (2016) and the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021).

He also starred as Dr. László Kreizler in the Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated period drama television series The Alienist (2018–2020), for which he earned a nomination for the Golden Globe Award as Best Actor in a Television Motion Picture at the 76th Golden Globe Awards in 2018.