Matthias Schweighöfer
Matthias Schweighöfer is an actor, born 1981.
Matthias Schweighofer was born in Anklam, in what was then East Germany, and has spent most of his career as a leading man in a film industry English-language audiences mostly never see. He directs as well as acts, and at home the comedies are the bigger story: Rabbit Without Ears and its sequel, 100 Things, Four Against the Bank.
The English-language work started small. He appears in Valkyrie in 2008 and in the submarine disaster drama Kursk a decade later, and neither part is why anyone knows him. Army of the Dead is. As Ludwig Dieter, a German safecracker terrified of everything except locks, he found a comic register nothing else in that film has, and Zack Snyder's zombie heist ended up partly belonging to him. Netflix then handed him a prequel, Army of Thieves, which he starred in and directed, an unusual promotion for a supporting character.
Since then he has been the German specialist in prestige American pictures. Werner Heisenberg in Oppenheimer is a small part in a very long film, and he plays the ambiguity instead of resolving it. He was Klaus Barbie in Resistance and Frank Farian in Girl You Know It's True, and there is an older German lead as Manfred von Richthofen in The Red Baron. Recent credits, Brick and Amrum, keep him working on both sides at once.
Movies (29)
- Oppenheimer (2023)
- Elio (2025)
- Army of Thieves (2021)
- Army of Thieves (2021)
- Brick (2025)
- Army of the Dead (2021)
- Valkyrie (2008)
- Heart of Stone (2023)
- Family Switch (2023)
- Robinson Crusoe (2016)
- Kursk (2018)
- The Swimmers (2022)
- Resistance (2020)
- Amrum (2025)
- Verbotenes Verlangen - Ich liebe meinen Schüler (2000)
- FearDotCom (2002)
- Night Train (2009)
- The Red Baron (2008)
- Cold Spring (2004)
- 100 Things (2018)
- Bibi & Tina: Bewildered and Bewitched (2014)
- The Life of Wishes (2025)
- Woman in Love (2011)
- Rabbit Without Ears (2007)
- Girl You Know It's True (2023)
- Rabbit Without Ears 2 (2009)
- Eight Miles High (2007)
- Four Against the Bank (2016)
- Fata Morgana (2007)
TV (6)
Where to start with Matthias Schweighöfer
Army of the Dead is the way in, even though it is not the best film here. Dieter is the only character in it with a functioning nervous system, and Schweighofer's timing does most of the work in a movie that is otherwise extremely loud.
Army of Thieves is the sequel to that decision rather than to the film: he directs himself through a safecracking caper, and it is lighter, sweeter and considerably better than a spin-off has any business being. Then Oppenheimer for the serious register, where Heisenberg gets a few scenes and Schweighofer declines to play him as a villain. Girl You Know It's True is the one for seeing him carry a whole German production, The Red Baron is the earlier attempt at the same thing, and Resistance shows what he does with a part that offers nothing warm to hold.