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Thomas Prenn was born on June 10, 1994 in Innichen, South Tyrol, Italy, and grew up in Toblach in the Puster Valley speaking German as his mother tongue. Without formal acting training, he played a leading role in the 2014 South Tyrolean war drama "Tränen der Sextner Dolomiten". That same year, he began his studies at the Ernst Busch University of Performing Arts in Berlin. As a student he already performed at the Teatro alla Scala (2016), the Deutsches Theater Berlin (2017) and the Berliner Volksbühne. In 2017, he won the Ensemble Prize at the Acting School Meeting in Stuttgart with the independent theater project "Odyssey".
After completing his studies in 2018, Prenn joined the ensemble of the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe for the 2018/19 season. There he appeared in the German premiere of the dramatic poem "Europa flieht nach Europa", played Valentin/Brander in "Faust I" and portrayed the teenage lover Claudio in Shakespeare's comedy "Much Ado About Nothing".
In addition to his theater work, Prenn has been involved in film and television productions since 2017. In Volker Schlöndorff's literary adaptation "Der namenlose Tag" (2017), he had a supporting role as a member of a small-town gothic scene. In the Tatort episode "Damian" (2018), he played the title role of a law student suffering from paranoia, a performance that earned him the Studio Hamburg Emerging Talent Award and the Günter Strack Television Award. He had a small, uncredited role in Terrence Malick's South Tyrol-set drama "A Hidden Life" (DE/US 2019).
In the miniseries "8 Tage" ("8 Days") produced by Sky Germany, Prenn had a recurring role as the terminally ill friend of the female lead (Luisa-Céline Gaffron). In the "Tatort" episode "Kein Mitleid, keine Gnade" (2020), he portrayed a student who is bullied because of his homosexuality. Prenn had a leading role in the Netflix production "Biohackers" (2020-2021).
For his leading role in the film "Hochwald" ("Why Not You", BE/AT 2020), in which he played a young South Tyrolean who flees to Rome with a free-spirited friend to escape the Catholic strictures of his homeland, Prenn received the Austrian Film Award for Best Actor in 2021.The following year he received a second Austrian Film Award, this time for his supporting role as a prisoner in "Große Freiheit" ("Great Freedom", DE/AT 2021).
In 2023, two films with Thomas Prenn in leading roles premiered: the award-winning and highly nominated love story "Sterne unter der Stadt" ("First Snow of Summer", AT 2023) and the moral and character portrait set in 1920s Berlin, "Die Mittagsfrau" (DE/CH/LU). Despite his numerous film and television roles, Thomas Prenn remains a member of the ensemble at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe.