Biography

It happened during his high school graduation party that Herbert Schäfer parodied a drunken principal which definitely made him gain the favor of his fellow students and also rendered grades a matter of secondary importance. Everyone who witnessed the scene knew that Herbert Schäfer was to become an actor. He also convinced the Otto Falckenberg Drama School audition panel of his skills and subsequently received the best of acting training that there is in Germany. Upon performing his absolutely convincing graduation monologues he became a fixed member with the ensemble at the theater in Ulm, Germany where for four years he got to play classics by Schiller, Goethe, Lessing, Kleist, and Brecht. Following a 3 year intermission and a couple of forays into summer theater, he joined another fixed ensemble, this time at the Theater Freiburg. This was a time in which plays started to be interpreted in a more modern and unconventional way. At that time he also got to know Amélie Niermeyer. She helped Herbert Schäfer take a big leap forward as an actor and they collaborated in a number of plays at the Schauspielhaus Duesseldorf. Risa Kes who was one of the very first and finest casting directors, introduced him to director Rainer Kaufmann which paved Herbert Schäfer's way to work in film. Thanks to his impressively sonorous voice he is also a well-established narrator for radio features, radio plays, audio books as well as for TV documentaries on the French-German TV network ARTE. As for truly convincing lead roles, Herbert Schäfer is currently performing in Superstar sucht Deutschland at the Kammerspiele Landshut, Germany and in Benefiz at the Metropol Theater München. His last lead performance in a film for the big screen was opposite Ulrike Tscharre in Ian Dilthey's Eines Tages
- IMDb mini biography by: Beate Mittermayer