Otto Waalkes

The Student Who Didn't Want to Paint

Otto Waalkes arrived in Hamburg in 1970 to study Fine Arts but ended up sharing an apartment with Udo Lindenberg and making a living performing in small venues. That artists' commune was the breeding ground for a kind of humor Germany had never seen. He wasn't after the deep political satire of the era. He preferred slapstick and absurd wordplay that drove serious critics to despair.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1972, he recorded his first comedy album, titled Otto, on his own record label because no major company trusted a young guy who made strange noises with his mouth. It sold 500,000 copies in just a few months. So he had to build his own infrastructure to manage a success that nobody in the German music industry saw coming.

The Phenomenon of the Fourteen Million

The real explosion came in 1985 with the release of Otto: The Movie. He co-wrote the script with Bernd Eilert and Robert Gernhardt, but directing duties went to Xaver Schwarzenberger. The film drew 14.5 million moviegoers to theaters in the Federal Republic of Germany. It's a figure that today seems like science fiction for any mid-budget European production.

But success didn't soften him.

He continued to explore his talent as a cartoonist with the Ottifants (those quick-sketched elephants), which went from simple doodles on his album covers to getting their own TV series in 1993. Waalkes understood early on that the real business was in intellectual property and in controlling every creative process of his projects. He never let a studio impose a commercial vision that clashed with his anarchic style.

Voice Work and Longevity on Screen

Starting in 2002, his voice became inseparable from Sid the sloth in the German version of Ice Age. That role let him connect with a generation that wasn't born yet when he was filling stadiums in the seventies. He brought the same frenetic energy to voice work that he brought to his live performances. In 2004, he returned to fill theaters again with 7 Zwerge: Men Alone in the Woods, which brought together much of Germany's comedy talent.

In 2021, he starred in the film adaptation of Catweazle, directed by Sven Unterwaldt Jr. The production had a budget of 8 million euros and was shot mainly on locations in North Rhine-Westphalia. Waalkes played the medieval wizard who travels to the present day, keeping his signature exaggerated physical comedy despite being over seventy years old.

Filming wrapped in August 2020.