Gedeon Burkhard

Gedeon Burkhard was born in Munich in 1969, with cinema already part of the family living room. His mother is actress Elisabeth von Molo, and his great-grandfather was actor Alexander Moissi. Before turning ten, he was already dubbing dialogue into German, and in 1979 he made his on-screen debut in the TV movie Tante Maria.

He was not the typical child prodigy who burns out after two summers.

In 1982, he took part in the miniseries Blut und Ehre. The shoot was complicated because it was filmed simultaneously in English and German. That bilingual ability allowed him to work on international productions much sooner than his agents had anticipated.

The Dog That Almost Devoured Him

Replacing Tobias Moretti was a suicide mission.

The comedy Kleine Haie earned him real recognition in the European industry in 1992. He played an aspiring actor who crosses Germany for an audition. But the real media earthquake came in 1998 when he took the role of detective Alexander Brandtner in Kommissar Rex.

Austrian audiences didn't forgive the death of the original lead, but Burkhard weathered the storm for 45 episodes. The actor insisted that his character not be a copy of the previous one. So Brandtner turned out to be a more reserved guy (a former special forces member dealing with the loss of his own working dog).

He left the series in 2001 to try to break into the U.S. market. He spent several years there working steadily, but never landed the role that would pull him out of the secondary circuit of cable television.

From the Highways to Quentin Tarantino

In 2007, he returned to German television to star in Alarm für Cobra 11. He only stayed for two seasons because the pace of a weekly action series with so many stunts wore him out. But that decision left his schedule open for the most important project of his filmography.

And then the call from Quentin Tarantino came.

In 2009, he played Corporal Wilhelm Wicki in Inglourious Basterds. It wasn't a leading role, but his place in Brad Pitt's squad gave him global visibility that no European procedural could offer. Tarantino chose him personally after watching several of his earlier videotape releases.

From 2010 onward, he spread his career between Italy and Germany. He appeared in the series La narcotici in 2011 and lent his voice to various animated projects. In 2024, he joined the cast of The First Omen (a horror prequel produced by 20th Century Studios).

The shoot for this last film took place in Rome with an estimated budget of $30 million.