Moritz Bleibtreu was born August 13, 1971, in Munich, as the son of the actors Monica Bleibtreu and Hans Brenner. He started his acting career in Rainer Boldt"s children"s film "Ich hatte einen Traum". After eleventh grade, Bleibtreu went to Paris as an au pair. After taking several acting classes and travelling abroad for nearly four years altogether, Bleibtreu became a cast member of Thalia Theater, and then of Schauspielhaus, both in Hamburg. From 1987 on, he starred in several TV movies and films, including larger parts in Peter Timm"s "Einfach nur Liebe" ("Simply Love", 1994) and in Bernd Schadewald"s "Kinder des Satans" (1995).

Bleibtreu then worked with director Rainer Kaufmann for the TV crime film "Unschuldsengel" and starred in the romantic comedy "Stadtgespräch" ("Talk of the Town"), also by Kaufmann. Bleibtreu"s portrayal of the naive, gay carpenter Karl caused a stir, as did his part as a slow-witted gangster in Thomas Jahn"s comedy "Knockin" on Heaven"s Door". Bleibtreu won the Ernst Lubitsch award for these two parts, and also won a Filmband in Gold for his performance in "Knockin" on Heaven"s Door".

In Tom Tykwer"s successful episodic film "Lola rennt" ("Run Lola Run"), Bleibtreu played the desperate and clumsy Manni. In 1999, he starred in Matthias Glasner"s film "Fandango", as well as alongside Christiane Paul in Fatih Akin"s "Im Juli" ("In July"), a romantic comedy that goes back and forth between Germany and Turkey. And in Oliver Hirschbiegel"s thriller "Das Experiment" ("The Experiment", 2002), Bleibtreu portrayed a cab driver who more and more fails to control a psychological experiment he has volunteered for.

In 2002, Bleibtreu played the son of an Italian guest worker in "Solino", directed by Fatih Akin. Then, in 2004, Bleibtreu played an uptight, sex-obsessed librarian in Oskar Roehler"s tragicomedy "Agnes und seine Brüder" ("Agnes and his Brothers"), the story of three dissimilar brothers. And in Helmut Dietl"s melodrama "Vom Suchen und Finden der Liebe" ("About the Looking for and the Finding of Love", 2004), Bleibtreu is looking for true love that, in a satiric allusion to the legend of Orpheus, would outlive even death itself.

After another role in a film by Oskar Roehler, "Elementarteilchen" ("Elementary Particles", 2006) after the novel by Michel Houellebecq, Bleibtreu played a cynical TV producer becoming idealistic in Hans Weingartners "Free Rainer" and a gangster boss in Özgür Yildirims "Chiko". Then producer legend Bernd Eichinger casted him for the role of Andreas Baader in his starstudded adaptation of Stefan Austs book on the Rote Armee Fraktion, "Baader Meinhof Komplex" (2008).

In the movie season 2009/2010, Bleibtreu remained a permanent fixture on the movie screens and played equally contrasting, yet challenging roles in a series of prestigious film productions: After a leading role in Fatih Akin"s award-winning neighborhood comedy "Soul Kitchen", Bleibtreu was seen in Philipp Stölzl"s period piece "Goethe!" (2010) as Goethe"s rival in love. He also played the cousin and confidant of German rapper Bushido in the biopic "Zeiten ändern sich" (2010), an Italian gangster in the crime film comedy "Jerry Cotton" (2010), and Hitler"s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in Oskar Roehler"s film "Jud Süß" (2010).