Philip Wiegratz is a German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 child actor

Child actor

The term child actor or child actress is generally applied to a child acting in motion pictures or television, but also to an adult who began his or her acting career as a child; to avoid confusion, the latter is also called a former child actor...

. His filmography consists partly of adaptations of popular English and German children's books.

Wiegratz is best known for his 2005 portrayal of the greedy Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 2005 film adaptation of the 1964 book of the same name by Roald Dahl. The film was directed by Tim Burton. The film stars Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket and Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka...

. He nonchalantly attended a casting call with no expectations of landing any particular part, but caught the attention of a casting director and was placed on a shortlist for the role of Augustus. Wiegratz returned for several callbacks and eventually landed the part, which marked his English-language film debut and also required him to wear a fatsuit

Fatsuit

A fatsuit is a bodysuit-like undergarment used to thicken the appearance of an actress or actor of light to medium build into a heavy-set or obese character, in conjunction with prosthetic makeup. Other spellings include fat suit and fat-suit....

 instead of getting fat on his own terms. He performed his own stunts in the scenes of Augustus falling into the river in Wonka's Chocolate Room.

That same year, he also appeared in Es ist ein Elch entsprungen (international title A Christmas Carol), adapted from the Andreas Steinhöfel storybook of the same name.

In 2006, Wiegratz starred in the eponymous film version of Cornelia Funke

Cornelia Funke

Cornelia Funke is a multiple award-winning German author of children's fiction. She was born on 10 December 1958, in Dorsten, North Rhine-Westphalia. Funke is best known for her Inkworld trilogy, with the English translation of the third book, Inkdeath, released on 6 October 2008. Many of her...

's Die Wilden Hühner

Wild Chicks

The Wild Chicks is a series of children's and youth books written by Cornelia Funke. The main protagonists are four girls, who go to class together and form the eponymous "Wild Chicks" girl gang. Five books were published between 1993 and 2003, which have sold over one million copies in Germany...

as a member of an all-boys group called the Pygmies, and returned for a sequel the following year. Both pictures were commercial successes, and he and several co-stars were guests on the German children's television program Ki.Ka Live

KI.KA

KI.KA is a public non-commercial free television channel based in Erfurt, Germany. It is a joint venture of national public television channels ARD, and ARD's constituent broadcasting institutions – BR, HR, MDR, NDR, Radio Bremen, RBB, Saarländischer Rundfunk, SWR, WDR and ZDF, and is targeted at...

on April 2, 2007.

Filmography

• Es ist ein Elch entsprungen (2005)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film)
  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 2005 film adaptation of the 1964 book of the same name by Roald Dahl. The film was directed by Tim Burton. The film stars Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket and Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka...
  
  (2005)
• Berndivent (one episode, 2006)
• Die Wilden Hühner (2006)
• Die Wilden Hühner und die Liebe (2007)
• Ki.Ka Live (one episode, 2007)
• Die Wilden Hühner und das Leben (2009)

External links