Oliver Masucci

The Man Who Fooled Germany

Oliver Masucci drove a car through the streets of Berlin dressed as Adolf Hitler for several weeks. It was not a heavy-handed prank or a sociological experiment of questionable ethics. It was the shoot for Ha vuelto in 2015. That film pulled him out of obscurity in classical theater and launched him straight into the lions' den of European cinema.

Before that moment, his life revolved around the stoves of his father's restaurant and the stages of the Burgtheater in Vienna. He was born in Stuttgart in 1968. He is the son of an Italian father and a German mother. That genetic mix gave him an imposing physique and a gaze that seems to take in every corner of the room before he speaks.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2017, Dark arrived. The Netflix series put him on the global map as Ulrich Nielsen. Playing a desperate cop trapped in a time loop required an intensity Masucci had already developed during his training years. He shot three seasons between 2017 and 2020. Nearly 20 million households saw his face in the first installment of the German series alone.

But his greatest personal challenge came with Enfant Terrible in 2020. He had to embody director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He gained 20 kilos for the role. He immersed himself in the self-destruction and genius of Germany's most prolific filmmaker. He won the German Film Award for Best Actor for that performance in 2021.

It was a brutal physical effort.

In 2022, he made the leap to Hollywood's big-budget productions with Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. He played Anton Vogel. He didn't mind moving from raw auteur cinema to a multimillion-dollar franchise full of green screens and digital effects. That's because Masucci sees the craft as artisan work, where the size of the set doesn't change the intent behind the gesture.

Metamorphosis as a Way of Life

The actor doesn't believe in half measures or the comfort of repetitive roles. In 2023, he took part in The Palace under the direction of Roman Polanski. The shoot took place at a luxury hotel in Gstaad. He shared the bill with Mickey Rourke and Fanny Ardant. Critics were merciless toward the film at the Venice Film Festival, but his presence was one of the few redeeming features.

Even so, the actor kept piling up international projects of varying scale. In 2024, he starred in The Movie Teller, directed by Lone Scherfig in the Atacama Desert. He endured temperatures of 40 degrees during the shoot in Chile, playing a complex character in a hostile environment.

It's not all spotlights and red carpets.

Masucci remains tied to his culinary side in Berlin. He owns a restaurant, where he is sometimes seen supervising the kitchen when he has no shoots lined up. In 2025, several independent productions are slated to premiere in the Central European market. The total budget of his latest international production, currently in post-production, amounts to 4.2 million euros.