Burghart Klaußner

A German actor who has gathered dozens of film credits in his nearly three-decade career, Burghart Klaussner has appeared in the Academy Award-nominated film "The Reader" and the Palme d'Or-winning drama "The White Ribbon." First gracing screens in the mid-1980s, one of Klaussner's initial noteworthy parts was a starring role in "The Riddle of the Sands," a made-for-television espionage thriller from 1987. While Klaussner continued to act regularly in German TV and films through the 1990s, playing supporting parts in movies like the war drama "Just a Matter of Duty," which screened at the 1993 Berlin Film Festival, and the 1997 satirical comedy "Rossini," it wouldn't be until the 2000s that his work put him on the radar of international audiences. In 2003, Klaussner acted in "Goodbye Lenin!," an offbeat comedy that received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. The next year, he co-starred in the crime drama "The Edukators," which was in the running for the Palme d'Or. Klaussner continued to act in films that made waves in world cinema, including the post-World War II-set effort "The Reader," which starred Ralph Fiennes and Oscar winner Kate Winslet, and controversial filmmaker Michael Haneke's grim, highly acclaimed drama "The White Ribbon."