Dirk Borchardt

Tough-looking actor Dirk Borchardt has benefited from his rugged face and physique almost from the beginning of his career. After graduating from Berlin's School for the Performing Arts, he was generally typecast as a rough character. Very often, this meant small parts as sinister criminals or gutsy cops in productions such as the long-running "Polizeiruf 110" and the even longer-running "Tatort." In the latter, Borchardt appeared in seven episodes spread over eight years of the show. Between TV roles, he took numerous film assignments, the most high profile of which was the visceral, Oscar-nominated "Downfall" (2004), a harrowing depiction of the final days of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime as they hide in a Berlin bunker. (Borchardt played a tank commander in the movie.) For the most part, however, he has concentrated on projects for domestic consumption. He was a club manager in the nightlife saga "Berlin Calling" (2008), for example, and reverted to type in a 2011 appearance as a commissar in yet another gritty and well-seasoned cop series, "A Case for Two." Unlike many actors, Borchardt has hedged his bets by developing another line of work in the movie and TV business -- he is also a stunt and fight coordinator, performing those functions for a number of German productions.