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Aaron Hilmer was born in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1999. He gave his debut in front of the camera in the student short film "Cowboy und Indianer" (2012). From 2013 through 2014, he played the recurring character Diego, a fellow student of the main character, in the children's and youth TV series "Die Pfefferkörner" ("The Peppercorns"). In the years following, Hilmer mainly played bigger and smaller guest roles in various TV series such as "Die Kanzlei" (2015), "Notruf Hafenkante" (2017) and "Großstadtrevier" (2017). In 2015 and 2016, he visited the acting school New Talent in Hamburg.
On the big screen, Hilmer could be seen in supporting roles in the comedy films "Schrotten!" ("Scrappin'", 2016) and "Einsamkeit und Sex und Mitleid" ("Sex, Pity and Loneliness", 2017). In the latter, he played a deeply religious teenager who attempts to come to terms with his awakening sexuality. The experimental short film "Final Stage" in which Hilmer played the lead role, was shown at the Berlinale 2017. Also in 2017, he starred in a supporting role in the episode "Amour Fou" of the German TV crime series "Tatort." He then starred in supporting and guest roles in several other TV series like "Ein Fall für zwei" and "In aller Freundschaft – Die jungen Ärzte".
Aaron Hilmer appeared in his first feature film lead role in "Das schönste Mädchen der Welt" ("The Most Beautiful Girl in the World", 2018), a modern adaptation of "Cyrano de Bergerac" set in a school. At the Günter Rohrbach Award, he was awarded the Saarland Radio Prize for Best Young Actor for this role. Under his role name Cyril, Hilmer also recorded the song "Immer wenn wir uns sehn" (Whenever we see each other) with the musician Lea, which made it into the German single charts.
In the next few years, Aaron Hilmer worked mainly for television. He played a leading role in the thriller "Der Auftrag" (2019) as a teenager who witnesses a murder and participates in a witness protection program together with his separated parents. In the three-parter "Preis der Freiheit" (2019), he played a GDR teenager who finds his mother again after a failed escape attempt and imprisonment in the West. In the disaster series "Sløborn" (2020/2022), he was part of the large ensemble in the role of a delinquent youth. He had a regular supporting role as the stepson of a mortician in the dramedy series "Das letzte Wort" ("The Last Word", 2020).
He was an alleged kidnapping victim in the crime drama "Der Kommissar und die Wut" (2020), and a militant vegan in the "Tatort" episode "Der Herr des Waldes" (2021).
Edward Berger cast Hilmer in a leading role as a young World War II soldier in "Im Westen nichts Neues" ("All Quiet on the Western Front"), a new adaptation of Erich-Maria Remarque's famous anti-war novel. The Netflix production was released in fall 2022.