Biography

Lilian Klebow was born in Munich, Germany, has lived in Vienna, Austria for 12 years, for 2,5 years in Berlin as well es in several other European cities like Rome. She always traveled a lot and considers the "world" her home. She is a real European and has also "roots", means relatives, in the US. San Francisco and Ohio, where part of her family emigrated to. Her name is originally Russian. Her grand-grad father came from White Russia over Poland to Berlin. There he met Lilians Italian-rooted grandmother. On her mothers side is a french influence. Lilian is married to the Slovenian-Austrian actor Erich Altenkopf.

A lot of famous actors like Romy Schneider or Senta Berger from Austria or Hildegard Knef from Germany and several filmmakers have enchanted and engaged cineastes across the globe. Most recently Austrian-German Actor Christoph Waltz made his way to Hollywood and was an inspiration for many European actors. Lilian admired the three great German-Austrian actresses Berger, Schneider and Knef very much. She has seen all of their films and spent most of her evenings at Munichs theatre "Kammerspiele" seeing the huge plays like "King Lear" or "King Edward II" starting at the age of 8. She never thought she will one day be an actress, cause she didn't come from a actors family.

Lilians father was a teacher at her school. Her mother a secretary at a real estate office. She as raised under modest circumstances in a working-class German neighborhood. Dancing was her first "love". She started taking classes at the age of 7 and trained nearly every afternoon. Her professional career started at the age of 10 in the children's choir of the state opera Munich and at the age of 16 as a singer in the band All About Angels in Germany.

While her graduation from the Willi-Graf Gymnasium in Munich (where also German actress Natasha Kinski studied) she was totally in love with acting, thanks to her acting teacher and famous German actress and singer Christine Goerner, who convinced her of applying for Viennas University of Performing Arts and the Performing Arts Studios Vienna, an mostly American school.

From 1997 until 2001 she studied at both schools acting and musical theatre in Vienna and Munich. In Berlin she attended film training classes at the Actors Lodge Berlin, where she was trained and learned about Stella Adlers work and training. 1999 she made her debut at the Salzburger Festspiele Festival (1999-2001). Numerous engagements in Germany and Austria followed, amongst others at the Volkstheater and Raimundtheater in Vienna, Gruppe 80, Wald4tler Hoftheater, Metropol, and Stadttheater Klagenfurt.

After working for over six years on stage she also made her first appearances in films and on TV. In 2005 she won two lead roles in the same year, auditioning for the German TV mini series "Stadt, Land, Mord" and the Austrian-German Co-Production "Soko Vienna/Soko Wien/Soko Donau". Playing those two roles as a female police officer were very special to her. Her grandfather was an police sergeant at Munich's homicide department and they made her well known in Germany and Vienna.

From 2005 until 2008 she played Detective Rebecca Lerchinger, a Bavarians Country Side Cop with a weird love live in the successful TV Mini Series "Stadt, Land, Mord", which also was aired in France as "Au fil de L'Enquete".

Since 2005 until today she has been playing the part of Inspector Penny Lanz on the successful TV series Soko Donau and was nominated in 2009 and 2010 for the Austrian Film Award Romy for Soko Donau and Stadt,Land,Mord, which is the equivalent oft he Emmy's in the USA.

The movie "Das grosse Glueck sozusagen" /"The big bliss as it were" (2009) was shown at several film festivals and won national and international awards. Lilian played in several other movies for cinema and television, such as three TV movies with Austrian Star Director and D.O.P. and former DOP of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Xaver Schwarzenberger. One of her first international works was a small part in the french movie "Marie and Freud" in 2003 under the french director Benoit Jaquot starring Catherine Deneuve.

Furthermore Lilian moderated the ceremony for the film award Undine in 2008, is a member of the Austrian Film Academy and sings in several music groups. In 2008 she performed with the Soko Loco Band at the ceremony for the Austrian film award ROMY (named after the Actress Romy Schneider) and in 2011 with her colleague Gregor Seberg at the at the Viennese Song Festival Wean Hean.

She also works as ADR dubbing and narration for documentaries, radio and audio books. She also co-produced two short films with Nicole Weber and is working on two solo projects for theatre as a writer.

Lilian Klebow is ambassador of honor for the world-famous activist and on chimpanzees expert and UN ambassador, Dr. Jane Goodall, and works with the Jane Goodall Institute Austria on many projects, in Europe and Africa. In August 2011 Lilian Klebow, FairSoul Communications and the Jane Goodall Institute shot an appeal for financial support for the JGI-A which was broad casted on several major Austrian TV and radio channels.

Lilian's latest venture is working with FairSoul Communications as an executive producer for German language documentary film projects

In February 2012 a documentary about the projects of the Jane Goodall Institute Austria and Jane Goodalls great work was shot in Uganda, Eastern Africa. Lilian spent two weeks there and made her first appearances in Ugandan Television.

She still dreams of Acting Training in the US and is a huge admirer of the American drama series.
- IMDb mini biography by: company 4