Sebastian Koch

Sebastian Koch (born 31 May 1962) is a German television and film actor. He is known for roles in the 2007 Academy Award-winning film The Lives of Others, in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, and as Otto Düring in the fifth season of the Showtime series Homeland. Koch grew up in Stuttgart with his mother who was a single parent. He originally wanted to be a musician, but production by artistic director Claus Peymann influenced him in the late 1970s to change careers to become an actor. From 1982 to 1985, Koch studied at the renowned Otto Falckenberg School in Munich. In addition to his cinematic work, he played a diversity of different roles on stage. Koch portrayed amongst other Peer Gynt and Leonce in Leonce and Lena at the municipal theatre of Darmstadt. At the Schiller theatre in Berlin he played the character Roller in Schiller's The Robbers and Orest in Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris. A couple of years later, he took over the role of Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband in the playhouse Bochum under the direction of Armin Holz.