Otto Sander

After moving to Munich in the late '60s to pursue acting full-time, German actor Otto Sander surfaced in 1979's "The Tim Drum"; Sander portrayed the musician Musiker Meyn in the big screen adaptation of the popular novel about an unaging youth, and the epic drama won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Next up was a role as a frantic U-Boat commander in Wolfgang Petersen's 1981 World War II epic, "Das Boot." Sander's career built up steam with pictures like "Der Mann im Pyjama," for which he won the prestigious Ernst Lubitsch Award in 1982. After serving a brief stint as a writer/director for television movies and documentaries, Sander took the leading role of Cassiel in Wim Wender's 1987 metaphysical fantasy, "Wings of Desire." The movie follows an angel (Sander) whose companion falls for a human woman--the film was re-made for American audiences in 1998 as "City of Angels," starring Nicolas Cage. Sander reprised his role in "Desire"'s 1993 sequel, "Faraway, So Close!," exploring Cassiel's life on Earth as a human. During the 1990s, the seasoned German actor--who acquired his nickname, "The Voice," for his deep but cheerful delivery--began narrating documentaries and voicing audio books. Despite this, he still set aside time to act in 1997's "Comedian Harmonists," about the German singing ensemble of the same name, starring Sander's stepson, Ben Becker.