Biography:

Hermann Beyer was born on May 30, 1943 in Altenburg, Germany, the younger brother of the internationally known director Frank Beyer. He studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Berlin from 1963 to 1966. His first theater engagements were at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin and at the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam (1969-1971). From 1972 to 1980, he acted at the Volksbühne in Berlin, before becoming a member of the Berliner Ensemble in 1983.

Beyer started his film career as a supporting actor at the East German DEFA Studio for Feature Films in the late 1960s. One of his first film roles was in Konrad Wolf’s autobiographical film, Ich war neunzehn, set in the last days of WWII. At the beginning of the 1980s, Beyer played leading roles in Unser kurzes Leben and Die Beunruhigung, two important contemporary films by director Lothar Warneke. Beyer also worked with his brother, who cast him in the Oscar-nominated Holocaust film Jakob der Lügner and Der Bruch, a crime story set in Berlin in 1946. In the latter film, Beyer shared the screen with Rolf Hoppe, Götz George and Otto Sander. He also played the challenging role of the Jacobin scholar Georg Forster in Michael Gwisdek’s Treffen in Travers.

Beyer has won numerous awards for his performances. He was nominated as a Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 2012 German Film Awards for his performance as a man suffering from dementia in Andreas Kannengießer’s psychological drama Vergiss dein Ende. A few years later, Beyer played the lead in Susanne Boening’s award-winning short film Winterreise, about a man who discovers his life is coming to an end. For this role, Beyer was nominated as Best Actor at the 2016 Wild Rose Independent Film Festival, in the U.S.

Since 1999, Hermann Beyer has worked as a stage actor at various theaters in Berlin, Weimar, Hamburg and Munich, as well as in film and television productions. He lives in Berlin.

Festivals & Awards: