Ben Becker is a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 film and theatre actor.

Life and work

Becker is the son of actress Monika Hansen and actor Rolf Becker

Rolf Becker

Rolf Becker is a German television actor. By his first wife, actress Monika Hansen, he is the father of actor Ben Becker, and actress and singer Meret Becker.-Selected filmography:* I'm an Elephant, Madame...

. He is the brother of actress Meret Becker

Meret Becker

- Life and career :Becker was born in Bremen, the daughter of the actors Monika Hansen and Rolf Becker. She is the sister of Ben Becker, stepdaughter of Otto Sander and granddaughter of Claire Schlichting....

 and the stepson of Otto Sander

Otto Sander

Otto Sander is a German film, theater, and voice actor.Sander grew up in Kassel, where he graduated in 1961 from the Friedrichgymnasium. After leaving school he spent his military service as a navy reserve officer and then studied theatre science, history of art and philosophy. In 1965 he made his...

. 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 drama

Radio drama

Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...

s and had several small roles in films. Between 1985 and 1987 he trained as an actor in the Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

er Schaubühne

Schaubühne

The Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz is a famous theatre in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin, located at almost the middle of the famous Kurfürstendamm. It is a conversion of the Kino Universum, designed by Erich Mendelsohn in 1926. This was perhaps the first Modernist cinema built in the world, as...

 theatre. His first contract was with Ernst-Deutsch-Theater in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

. Later he joined the Staatstheater Stuttgart

Staatstheater Stuttgart

The Staatstheater Stuttgart ' is an opera house in Stuttgart, Germany. It is also known locally as the Grosses Haus, having been the larger of two theatres of the former Königliche Hoftheater....

 (Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

 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

Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus

The Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus is a theatre building in Düsseldorf, with four auditoria.- External links :*...

, and played the role of Tybalt

Tybalt

Tybalt is a fictional character and the main antagonist in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. He is Lady Capulet's nephew, Juliet's hot-tempered cousin and Romeo's rival. Tybalt shares the same name as the character Tibert/Tybalt the "Prince of Cats" in Reynard the Fox, a point of...

 in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

 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 Serbia

Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...

n heroine. His big break was in 1995 as Peter, who fell in love with a man, in Joseph Vilsmaier

Joseph Vilsmaier

Joseph Vilsmaier is a German film director.-Work:After attending a boarding school near Augsburg, he was trained as a technician to make film cameras and then spent nine years at a music conservatory. Following this he was a member of a jazz group...

's Schlafes Bruder. In the film Comedian Harmonists

Comedian Harmonists

The Comedian Harmonists were an internationally famous, all-male German close harmony ensemble that performed between 1928 and 1934 as one of the most successful musical groups in Europe before World War II...

he played the singer Robert Biberti.

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

Alfred Döblin

Alfred Döblin was a German expressionist novelist, best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz .- 1878–1918:...

's Berlin Alexanderplatz

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Berlin Alexanderplatz is a novel by Alfred Döblin, published in 1929. The story concerns a small-time criminal, Franz Biberkopf, fresh from prison, who is drawn into the underworld. When his criminal mentor murders the prostitute whom Biberkopf has been relying on as an anchor, he realizes that...

. In 2006 he played in the unique film, Ein ganz gewöhnlicher Jude, 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)

Schiller (band)

Schiller is the main project of Christopher von Deylen , a German musician, composer and producer. He won the ECHO award in 2002 for the Best Dance Single of the Year.. Schiller has sold over 7 million albums worldwide.Christopher Von Deylen does not provide vocals for any of his compositions...

 (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 http://www.karo.b-hoffmann.de/Dat/Seele.html 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

Hebrew Melodies

Hebrew Melodies is both a book of songs with lyrics written by Lord Byron set to Jewish tunes by Isaac Nathan as well as a book of poetry containing Byron's lyrics alone. It was published in April 1815 with musical settings by John Murray; though expensive at a cost of one guinea, over 10,000...

. 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

Otto Gildemeister

Otto Gildemeister was a German journalist and translator.-Biography:In 1850 he became editor-in-chief of the Weser-Zeitung of Bremen. He is known for his German renderings of Byron's complete works Otto Gildemeister (1823 Bremen - 1902) was a German journalist and translator.-Biography:In 1850 he...

, 3rd Volume, Fifth Edition, Berlin 1903 (pages 134-135).

Awards

• 1997 Bavarian Film Award
  Bayerischer Filmpreis
  The Bavarian Film Awards have been awarded annually since 1979 by the State Government of Bavaria in Germany for “exceptional achievement in German filmmaking.” Along with the German Film Awards, these are the most highly regarded awards for filmmaking achievement in Germany.The Bavarian Film...
  
  , Special Prize http://www.bayern.de/Anlage19170/PreistraegerdesBayerischenFilmpreises-Pierrot.pdf