NEW FACETS OF A NICE LAD
“The last few weeks were very relaxing for me. I was on holiday, as I didn’t get a holiday at all last year,” Kostja Ullmann says when we meet him for a chat in his home city, Hamburg. “Now it’s back to work again. I have several screenplays to read and castings to go to.” Ullmann appears down to earth, focused, and also visibly relaxed about self-determined phases without work. “I am 24 now – and things have gone so well to date that I can wait for a few months now and then. I am not worried about it.”
Indeed, over the last five years Ullmann has experienced a vertical career take-off matched by few other German actors of his age. From rather trivial TV-appearances in his youth, he later established himself with productions such as "Summer Storm" or "Hounded" into a character actor with media presence who not only understands his job, but has also managed quite cleverly to flout his early image as the ‘charming boy’ with appearances in comedies such as "Special Escort".
“At the beginning, I was often cast as the nice, well-behaved lad from next-door,” Kostja Ullmann says with a wink, concerning the early phase of his career – and at first glance, this overhasty pigeonholing in a particular type of role comes as no real surprise: Ullmann is 1.71m tall, fit and trim with brown eyes, brown hair and a roguish charm. “At some point I just thought to myself: it is only a matter of time! I don’t look anything like a villain. In the meantime, fortunately, I have been given the chance to prove myself in other roles as well.”
Besides his talent and tenacity, it was surely this obvious charisma that made women yearn for him and yet also astonished the film world – and all this without any professional training as an actor. “I gave up the training after only six months at the age of eighteen, even though I’m sure that drama schools are a great thing. At that time my problem was simply that I had already gathered a bit of experience, but the people there would have preferred me to forget it all again so that I could be polished, like a rough diamond. I was still very young, I want- ed to make films and then I was offered a part in "Summer Storm". In the meantime, the option to take up drama school again – until the age of 23 – no longer stands.”
Continuing his education with body-building, elocution lessons and Thai boxing in his spare time, the actor has not regretted his decision up to now. “When you get the chance to make films together with such marvellous colleagues as Michael Mendl, August Zirner and Bruno Ganz, you can learn a lot just by watching them.”
Perhaps he also learned from these great actors how to push stories forward with such rigor and honesty. Ignoring the customary rule for young stars, he has already revealed all several times in the course of his career; he showed courage to disclose both physical and psychic nakedness in "Hounded" especially. “I never questioned that kind of scene, because when I undressed in films the meaning was always obvious to me. There are one or two heavier scenes in 'Hounded' in particular, but it would have been totally unsuitable in this case to pan over the body’s silhouette in a coy American style and then show no more than a kiss. If you decide in favor of that kind of material, you do it properly.”
Here, therefore, Ullmann has bridged a big gap since his first appearance as an eleven-year-old on the stage of Hamburg’s Ernst Deutsch Theater. “At that time I played a girl; I stood in a window that opened and had to say only a single sentence, ‘Yes, and then?’ That was my ‘big’ appearance, though it was exciting enough for me at the time. But I didn’t realize then what it really means to be an actor. Today I know: This is what I want to do.”
After a professional career of several years, during which the self- designated romantic (“I do a lot of thinking”) has also been able to learn a lot about himself, he now aims for a balanced combination of TV and cinema productions. A well-coordinated team helps him with the careful selection. “In ‘die agenten’, I have a marvellous agency that is able to pre-select, and I also have an outstanding PR-advisor in Peter Schulze. And my family, who all know so much about the film world, can help me if I have any real doubts about anything.” He can only understand the way many other actors shy from association with the TV medium to a certain extent: “Cinema is more exciting sometimes perhaps, because there is more money and, above all, more time available. But there is no way I am going to refuse an attractive project just because it is a television film.”
In the foreseeable future, Ullmann’s attention will continue to be focused on the German market, although after his first international shooting experience in Japan he would love to make a film in France: “German film is going in the right direction. The screenplays that I have at the moment are getting better and better, and more exciting. The fact that we are getting a lot of acclaim from other countries now is also giving German film the courage to do its own thing.”
This openness towards new creative facets will probably guarantee Kostja Ullmann a secure place in Germany’s film business in coming years as well. “I know how to use my time,” Ullmann sums up. And one is quite willing to believe him.
Author: Johannes Bonke