The Extensive – Celebrity birthday of October 29, 2018: Thomas Thieme

Weimar (dpa) – For the anecdotes, it is always available anyway. But the environment helps Thomas Thieme's memories a bit more about jumps.

The actor is on the scene of the German National Theater (DNT) in Weimar, his hometown and hometown. "It all started here," he says, evoking time as a backdrop and the moment when he watched the events on stage when he was a child in the auditorium. At the age of 70 (October 29), he has been in the limelight for a long time.

As an actor, Thieme has not only made an important place in theaters, but also in cinemas, for example as an East German minister in the Academy Award-winning film "The Lives of Others" or as as a Nazi citizen in Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Fuhrerbunker drama".

"I was lucky with my roles, but the acting profession is also a talented profession – and I probably was not talent free," Thieme said. For the artisbad part, he first attended the State Theater School of East Berlin. He then played in Görlitz, Anklam, Magdeburg and Halle. In 1984, he left the GDR. "I did not have it so with the fidelity of the system, but as far as I know, there was no intention of turning me into a system man," he says.

To the west, he went to the Frankfurt Schauspiel, then to the Vienna Burgtheater, the Schaubühne in Berlin and the Deutsche Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. He played Brecht, Goethe and again and again Shakespeare plays: When Richard III. In the epic "Schlacht!" From Luk Perceval, which brings together dramas of the playwright, Thieme has finally become the actor of the year.

Also in cooperation with the Belgian Perceval, Thieme played the main role in the five hours of "Molière – A Pbadion". This role has earned him the reputation of being an event, a test that can play in such anger that he inflicts real wounds on stage.

For the majority of Germans, Thieme is expected to be the last of the television productions as the interpreter of football manager Uli Hoeneß and former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He accepted both roles immediately. "What's more exciting than digging into such figures, giving them your face, your voice?" He once met Hoeneß in private. "I did not see any villain in front of me."

He was looking for "little Helmut and little Uli" and wanted to know how they had become fat and tax evasion. "I wanted to get away from Stammtisch's speech."

Kohl and Hoeneß were roles that Thieme – we can not say otherwise – was tailor-made. It's a colossus, a force, an actor's mountain, it's always about him. "I have to look in a certain way! There are excellent colleagues where you look, a disaster for an actor!"

He sees in his appearance a certain value of gratitude. So, like to call it "fat Thieme", says the 69 year old. "If I had not been fat, I might have played other roles – maybe Hamlet rather than Richard III." That's why he has never suffered. "I'm just not so vain about optics – otherwise."

Thieme explains that he is now mainly in front of the camera: Twelve years ago he was too busy with the theater. "I played a lot and not so much fun on stage, so when I played Faust and Shakespeare, I was also in the bucket." The lightness on stage but he had lost. "That's why I thought it was time to take a closer look at the TV and movie offerings."

The hobbies are Thieme silly. So is he a workaholic? Yes, but he also appreciates other things: he has always cultivated his love of life, he says. In all its facets. Three grown children have Thieme. With three different women, as he points out. Age does it but something to create: "I must now be more careful that I can not eat and drink as before."

Thieme lives in Berlin – and again in Weimar. His hometown has the size and volume that suits his age, he says. Here you can find peace. Nevertheless, his relationship with the clbadical city is ambiguous. "Weimar is strange, it's difficult with the concept of culture." A prize that the city attributes to its deserving cultural creators, he proposed recently. "I did not see anything in common with the previous winners and I did not want to get into history like the eternal Weimarer," says Thieme.

In case it could not work with Mobility, Thieme already has a plan, because it can continue: "In Thuringia, I have a forest hut on a slope, designed as an amphitheater terrace".

He could imagine in this retreat theater weekends on a smaller scale, in which he and his son perform together. "Maybe a great colleague could enter the forest." But that seems to take time: recently, he played a role in the film version of the hit novel "Unterleuten" by Juli Zeh. And in the coming year, it will be seen in ZDF's three-part film "The Wall".