Clemens Schick (born 15 February 1972) is a German actor, model, political activist and human rights advocate.
He has appeared in more than seventy films since 1998,[1] including leading roles in both German and international productions. He has appeared in various major German and international TV productions and series.
Schick is politically active and an active member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). He is an active champion of human rights issues and is a committee member of the German Human Rights Watch chapter.
Life
Schick was born in Tübingen, Germany.[2] The son of a teacher and a prosecutor, he has four siblings, including a sister and an older brother. He studied at the Hölderlin High School in Stuttgart, from where he graduated in 1992. After his graduation, he enrolled at the Academy of Performing Arts (AdK) in Ulm.[3]
Following one year of studies, the then 22-year-old Schick decided to leave Germany and headed for France, where he intended to join the monastery of the Taizé Community in Taizé, Saône-et-Loire.[4] After an eight-month stay, however, he returned to Germany, where he enrolled at the Berlin School of Drama.[5] He completed his studies in 1996, having financed his studies with part-time jobs as a landscape gardener, bouncer, and waiter in restaurants and pubs in Berlin-Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg.[6]
In an interview with Gala magazine in September 2014, Schick came out as a homosexual. He stated that he is not interested in either "gay" or "heterosexual" labels and falls in love with both men and women, but only dates men.[7] In the past he had a few girlfriends, including German actress Bibiana Beglau, who he briefly dated in 2010.[8] Today, he lives in Kreuzberg in central Berlin.
In the summer of 2007 and again in 2008, Schick was also to be seen in the role as 'Death' at the Salzburg Festival in Hofmannsthal's Jedermann.[14]
Schick's first solo show, Windows or: Let's imagine Bill Gates as a happy person, a monologue written by Mathias Greffrath, was staged by the Schauspielhaus Hannover in 2010. The play saw Schick in the role of Bill Gates musing with the audience about business, technology, narcissism and life's moral questions.[4] He later performed in the solo show in the Sophiensäle theatre, and again for German soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.[15]
Cinema and television
In addition to his theatre work, Schick has acted extensively in both German and international film and TV productions with roles in more than 70 movies and TV series.[1] His work spans from roles in Hollywood productions to independent cinema.
The opening film of the "Perspective German Cinema" at the Berlinale 2007 was Upright Standing by Hannah Schweier, in which Schick plays the main role of 'Joe'. In 2008, Schick played alongside Alexandra Neldel and Erhan Emre the role of the detective 'Marco Lorenz' in the television series Innocent.[16]
In 2013, Schick played in the French two-part TV mini-series Le vol des cigognes (or Flight of the Storks), an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Jean-Christophe Grangé.[22] He took the role of the policeman 'Hervé Dumaz', who speaks French, English, and German. It was directed by Jan Kounen. Harry Treadaway, Perdita Weeks, and Rutger Hauer starred in other roles. It aired in January 2013 on Canal +.
In 2018 he performed in the Finnish-German crime drama series Arctic Circle. Playing alongside Maximillian Brückner, Pihla Viitala and Iina Kuustonen among others, Schick is seen in the role of Marcus Eiben, a multimillionaire CEO of a pharmaceutical company.[27] The series is directed by Hannu Salonen, a Finnish director based in Germany.[28]
More recently, Schick has appeared in the Netflix-produced bio-pic Sergio (2019) about the life of controversial diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, alongside Wagner Moura and Ana de Armas.[29] In 2019, he appeared in a leading role in the first german Netflix Original Kidnapping Stella (2019), directed and written by Thomas Sieben and featuring leading roles from Schick, Jella Haase and Max von der Groeben.[30] In 2022 he appears in Dylan Moran sit-com for the BBC Stuck.[31]
Volunteer work and political engagement
Schick is openly politically engaged and has been an active member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD),[32][33] since 2016. He was actively supporting the SPD-initiated "My Voice for Reason" campaign in 2016.
In 2008, Schick visited the German ISAF contingent in Masar-e Sharif (Camp Marmal), Kunduz and Feyzabad in Afghanistan.[34] Here he performed his solo show Windows for the troops, and was accompanied by a camera crew, for a documentary by Jobst Knigge which was titled "The Trooper: Clemens Schick plays theatre in Afghanistan".[15][34] Schick visited the troops again in 2011 and 2012, supporting the German soldiers at Afghan military sites of the German ISAF troops through theatre performances in Masar-i-Sharif and Kabul.[35]
Schick also participated in the Alliance Against Castor 2010 and signed a call for artists in numerous newspapers, calling on the population to take part in protests against the castor transport and the extension of the term of German nuclear power plants.[36]
Schick is a member of Human Rights Watch, and sits on the charter's Berlin committee. He is a member of the Bundesverband Schauspiel (BFFS or Federal Association of Acting),[37] and an ambassador for the Hugo Tempelmann Stiftung, a non-profit working to battle HIV in South Africa.[38]
In 1996 and again in 2009, Schick modelled in Paris and Berlin for US photographer Nan Goldin.[39][40]
In 2018, Schick was named a brand ambassador for German luxury brand Montblanc.[39]
^Rädel, Michael (16 September 2016). "SCHICK: FRITZ UND CLEMI" (in German). blu.fm. Archived from the original on 19 April 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2019.