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Christian Friedel, born March 9, 1979, in Magdeburg, attended drama school at Munich's Otto Falckenberg Schule from 2001 to 2004. After finishing drama school, he directly started to work at Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel before he became a cast member of Schauspiel Hannover where he stayed from 2006 to 2009. He then went to Dresdner Staatsschauspiel where he is a cast member to date. In 2005, Friedel won the Merkur promotional award in Munich for numerous strong theatre performances.
Since 1999, Friedel has appeared as an actor in several short films. In 2009, he finally made his feature film debut: In Michael Haneke's film "Das weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindheitsgeschichte" ("The White Ribbon") that won the Golden Palm at the 2009 Cannes film festival followed by dozens of other national and international awards, he plays the role of a teacher in a northern German village in the years 1913 and 1914 where several mysterious crimes are committed.
In 2010, Christian Friedel was awarded the Erich-Ponto-Preis for his work. He then had a supporting role in the international co-production "Huhn mit Pflaumen", which premiered at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, and starred in the drama "Ende der Schonzeit". Along with his acting career, Christian Friedel also moonlights as a musician and composer: The debut album of his band "Woods of Birnam" was released in 2012.
Friedel played the male lead in Jessica Hausner's period drama "Amour fou" (2014), which premiered in the section "Un certain regard" at the Cannes Film Festival. The story about a poet who enters a romantic suicide pact with his cousin was inspired by poet Heinrich von Kleist. After a supporting role in the made-for-TV film "Die Auserwählten" (2014), Friedel was cast in the title role in Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Elser" (2014/2015), which recounts the fate of German resistance fighter Georg Elser, who tried to kill Adolf Hitler. For this role Friedel was nominated for the German Film Award and for the European Film Award.
Audiences then saw Friedel portray Adolf "Adi" Dassler, co-founder of sportswear giant Adidas, in the TV biopic "Die Dasslers - Pioniere, Brüder und Rivalen," which won the Bernd Burgemeister Television Award at the 2016 Munich Film Festival. The same award, as well as the Grimme Prize, went to the TV movie "Zuckersand" a year later. In "Zuckersand", Christian Friedel portrays a loyal GDR family man whose adolescent son struggles with his best friend's escape plans.
In the illustrious ensemble of the lavishly produced and internationally acclaimed series "Babylon Berlin", based on the detective novels by Volker Kutscher, Friedel portrays the gay police photographer Reinhold Gräf over several seasons, offering a dramatic portrayal of Berlin in the Roaring Twenties.
In addition to his various television roles, including the miniseries "Das Parfüm" ("Perfume", 2018) and the "Tatort" productions "Unsichtbar" (2021) and "Murot und das Prinzip Hoffnung", and appearances in films such as the coming-of-age drama "Glück ist was für Weicheier" ("Happiness Sucks") and Detlev Buck's adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel "Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull" ("Confessions of Felix Krull", 2021), Friedel remains committed to theater and music. Since 2012, he has been portraying "Hamlet," first at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and from 2019 at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. Friedel's other notable theatrical engagements - under his own direction - include the title role in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and his solo performance in Robert Wilson and Anna Calvi's adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman." Many of these productions feature music from his band Woods of Birnam, with whom Friedel had released seven albums by 2020.
In 2024, Christian Friedel was honored with the Art Prize of the City of Dresden for his many contributions to the arts. Also in 2024, Jonathan Glazer's widely acclaimed Holocaust reflection "The Zone of Interest" premiered in German cinemas. In this award-winning film, Friedel portrays Rudolf Höß, the commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, alongside Sandra Hüller. Equally impressive was his performance in Chris Kraus' "15 Jahre" ("15 Years") the sequel to the 2006 drama "Vier Minuten" ("Four Minutes") which premiered in January and earned Friedel a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the German Film Awards.