Tom Schilling

Tom Schilling
Schilling in Vienna, 2008
Born	(1982-02-10) 10 February 1982 (age 35) East Berlin, East Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1996–present
Partner(s)	Annie Mosebach
Children	2

Tom Schilling (/ˈʃɪliŋ/; born 10 February 1982) is a German television and film actor.

Schilling grew up in the formerly East German borough of Berlin Mitte. He was discovered at the age of 12 by stage director Thomas Heise, and cast in the stage play Im Schlagschatten des Mondes (Under the shadow of the moon) at the Berliner Ensemble theatre company, which he stayed with for the next four years to play in other productions as well. Acting jobs earned him enough money to move out of his parents' place when he was 18 and still in school. He left school with Abitur certificate.

Schilling's screen acting debut was in 1996, when he, aged 14, appeared in the Sat.1 TV series ‘Hallo, Onkel Doc!’ He was later cast in the theatrical film Schlaraffenland (1999) where he played alongside Franka Potente, Daniel Brühl and Heiner Lauterbach, but the breakthrough for him came with his performance in Crazy (2000, directed by Hans-Christian Schmid), for which he received the Talented Young Actor Award of the Bayerischer Filmpreis.

In the critically well-received 2004 film Before the Fall (German title: Napola – Elite für den Führer, directed by Dennis Gansel) he played alongside Max Riemelt a young and fragile student at a Nazi elite school (Napola). In 2006, he received a scholarship for the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York, where he studied for half a year. In the same year, he became a father to a son. Schilling was later given the role of the young Adolf Hitler in Urs Odermatt's 2009 film Mein Kampf (the UK DVD release is marketed as Dawn of Evil: Rise of the Reich), co-starring Götz George.