Christian Redl (born 20 April 1948) is a German actor and singer.
Life
Christian Redl is the son of a teacher. He grew up in
Kassel, trained from 1967 to 1970 at the
Schauspielschule Bochum and was then engaged in theatres in
Wuppertal,
Frankfurt,
Bremen, and
Hamburg, where he worked with
Claus Peymann,
Luc Bondy, and
Peter Zadek. In 1986, he starred in his first big role in a cinema production, which is Uwe Schrader's Sierra Leone [
de]. He became well-known in the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s for films by Bernd Schadewald, especially for his lead role in the 1990 TV film Der Hammermörder [
de], for which he earned the
Grimme-Preis and for the 1994 film Angst [
de], for which he was nominated for a
Telestar award.
Along with his theatre work, there were more TV productions, in which he worked with
Matti Geschonneck holding a special place: Der Rosenmörder, Ein mörderischer Plan, and Späte Rache. Two more cinema productions were Lea directed by
Ivan Fíla and The Trio [
de] directed by
Hermine Huntgeburth. He also starred as
GeneraloberstAlfred Jodl in the 2004
Oliver Hirschbiegel film Downfall. Redl also played abysmal figures in the German film Tattoo directed by
Robert Schwentke and in the
ZDF police film series Nachtschicht by
Lars Becker. He is regularly seen in cinema and TV productions, especially in TV thrillers like the ZDF series KDD – Kriminaldauerdienst and in international films like Krabat by
Marco Kreuzpaintner and Die Päpstin by
Sönke Wortmann. At the
Hamburger Kammerspiele, he starred in Kunst and Der Totmacher, and at the
St.-Pauli-Theater in the Dreigroschenoper, in Sonny Boys, and in Arsen und Spitzenhäubchen. In the spring of 2009, he starred in Tod in der Eifel, a TV film directed by Johannes Grieser, and in Der Tote im Spreewald. Since 2006, Redl starred as the laconic and lonely commissioner Thorsten Krüger in the ZDF crime series Spreewaldkrimi, playing in
Spreewald, where the aftermaths of which are sporadically filmed. In 2013, he won the German Academy of Television award for best supporting actor for his role in Marie Brand und die offene Rechnung.
He also works as an audiobook speaker and musician.
Christian Redl had been dating actress
Maja Maranow for many years. He is the stepbrother of actor Wolf Redl.