Our guest on 23.11.2008

Dominique Horwitz is a German-based actor with French nationality whose parents fled to France to escape Nazi persecution and then took on French citizenship.

Dominique Horwitz grew up with his brother and sister in Paris where his parents ran a delicatessen. With his family, Horwitz moved to Berlin in 1971. There he completed his secondary education and got his first television role in 1977. His first film role followed one year later and he spent 1978 and 1979 as part of Berlin's cabaret "CaDeWe". In the meantime Horwitz has performed in almost all of Germany's leading theaters. He came to national fame in Germany when he acted in a TV mini-series, "Der Grosse Bellheim". His international film breakthrough came in 1992 when he played the leading role in Josef Vilsmaier's film "Stalingrad".

Horwitz has also built a career singing a program of Bertholt Brecht-Kurt Weill songs in his "The Best of Dreigroschenoper" (The Best of the Threepenny Opera). He also interprets Belgian chansonneur Jacques Brel.

One of his last roles was in the one-man-show "I Am My Own Wife" by Doug Wright which told the true story of the transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf who lived in East Berlin.

Horwitz spent about twenty years living in Hamburg. He has two children from his first marriage. The 51-year old married Anna in 2003 with whom he has has two children. They live in a village close to Weimar in eastern Germany.