
Acting
Rufus Beck is the only child of a business-owning couple. Because his parents traveled extensively abroad, he lived in the boarding school of the Odenwald School. After graduating from high school in 1976 and completing his civilian service, Beck studied Islamic Studies, Ethnology, and Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, but later dropped out. From 1976 onward, he appeared as a musician and acting student at the Heidelberg Municipal Theatre. The following year, he was a guest performer at the Saarland State Theatre, followed by engagements at the Tübingen State Theatre, the Frankfurt Theatre, the Cologne Theatre, the Bavarian State Theatre, the Munich Kammerspiele, and the Berliner Ensemble. He later also appeared as a guest performer at the Berlin Renaissance Theatre (2006), the Stuttgart State Theatre (2010), and the Hamburg Kammerspiele (2014). In 1989, Beck was named "Young Actor of the Year" by the magazine Theater heute. Also in 1989, he received the Young Actor Award from the Friends of the Bavarian State Theatre. In 1990, he toured the Soviet Union with Friedrich Schiller's *The Robbers*, performing in Moscow, Irkutsk, and Alma-Ata. He toured South America in 1991 with G.E. Lessing's *Miss Sara Sampson*. In 1994, he toured Germany with Peter Maffay's *Tabaluga*. Beck's breakthrough in film came in 1994 with Sönke Wortmann's *The Most Desired Man*, for which he received a Bambi Award for his role as Waltraut. In 1999, he was nominated for the German Film Award for *Jimmy the Kid*. He has appeared in more than 70 television and 14 feature films (as of 2018). In the children's film *The Wild Soccer Bunch* (2003), he played the role of "Coach Willi." He reprised this role in *The Wild Soccer Bunch – The Legend Lives!* (2016). Rufus Beck is the narrator and producer of more than 200 audiobooks, including the Harry Potter novels. He gives each of the many characters a distinct voice, employing various dialects and accents. His audiobooks have received numerous awards. During the 2006 and 2007 festival seasons, Beck played Mephisto in Goethe's *Faust* at the Bad Hersfeld Festival. Under the artistic direction of Dieter Wedel, he played Joseph Süß Oppenheimer in Jehoschua Sobol's *The Story of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, Called Jud Süß* at the 2011 Worms Nibelungen Festival. In 2004, he directed the dance spectacular for the world tour of *Night of the Sultans – Pandora's Legend* in Istanbul. In 2003, 2012, and 2016, he was responsible for directing, writing, and playing the magician and the beetle in the musical Tabaluga. Rufus Beck wrote several stage adaptations for his own shows. In 2006, he published the anthology *Stories for Us Children*. His non-fiction book *Children Love Fairy Tales and Discover Values* was published in 2007. He appeared with his son Jonathan Beck in the film *The Wild Soccer Bunch* and toured with him in 2014/15 with the play *Zorn*. Jonathan Beck also played the role of 0815 in his father's Tabaluga productions in 2012 and 2016 and was also his assistant director. Since 2018, he has starred in the television series *Deutsch-Les-Landes*. His daughters Sarah Beck and Natalie Spinell also work as actors. Rufus Beck lives in Munich.

The heterosexual man Axel is thrown out of his girlfriends home for cheating and ends up moving in with a gay man. Axel learns the advantages of living with gay men even though they are attracted to him and when his girlfriend wants him back he must make a tough decision.

The school year is over and for a diverse group of carefree kids, soccer is king! These kids believe that they are the local gold team and there is nothing they like more than improving their game. "If you want to be cool, you should be wild." However, the relentless rain turns their field into a swamp, so they have to take an unexpected break. And when the sun finally comes, a gang of older, bigger and dumber boys has just taken over the field. They won't give it back unless they lose a match against the kids.

The work-shy, lazy Germanicus is taken to Rome by slave traders and sold straight to the nouveau riche Roman Tusnelda. He manages to escape, but only to end up in the next misery as a taster at the imperial court. When the emperor dies, he is arrested as an emperor's assassin and is to be thrown to the tigers in the arena.With the help of the black slave Saba, he manages to win the deadly fight and is proclaimed - against his will - the new emperor of the Roman Empire.His pragmatic ideas as a statesman explain why the Roman Empire ended so abruptly. At the side of Saba, who is elevated to empress, he returns to his home village of Sumpfing, where he now promises himself completely new perspectives ...

Somewhere in the Bavarian province the robber Hotzenplotz is up to mischief. One day he robs Kasperl's grandmother's coffee grinder. Since the goofy sergeant Dimpfelmoser sees little hope of finding the robber, Kasperl and his best friend Seppel decide to track down the robber themselves. With a ruse, they manage to find the robber's cave, but are then caught by Hotzenplotz, who sells Kasperl to the magician Zwackelmann.

Maggie and Paul senior meet in a chat room. They are so taken with each other that they decide to take the plunge and meet up in real life. There's just one catch: both have made themselves younger - as young as Maggie's daughter Eva and Paul's son Paul junior. The two "children" agree to go on a date instead of their parents, which turns out to be quite a flop. It remains to be seen whether Maggie and Paul will dare to meet in person...

Mary and Marquard are painters and lovers, with a common life. Once Marquard gets a prize of a considerable sum of money, his artistic creativity wanes. While Mary works in a series of paintings, Marquard visits his friend Gregor, a horse breeder and philosopher, sleeps with Angie and visits repeatedly her daughter Lucia. Marquard and Lucia, who have begun a tender and compassionate father-daughter relationship, spend two days in a seaside hotel, deciding not to speak in words. The feelings and communication emerge from a very special way. Mary, who does not know the whereabouts and the reason of the absence of Marquard, realizes it by herself: their love is over. Then, she abruptly interrupts her work so far and starts a new painting entitled "The visible and invisible."

Spike is a musician who, has additional income, smuggling stolen cars. He is also called Mr. Bluesman because he loves the blues more than anything. One day he is supposed to smuggle a Mercedes-Benz into Genoa . However, he gets the wrong car that belongs to the mafia around boss Hormann.


Susanne works for an auction company, and founds out that a painting that they have been charged to sell is a copy. So she goes to Florence, where the expert that made the valuation lives, and meets with the owner.

Poor Bibi - due to her bad marks in maths she has to spend the whole summer in the boarding school of Altenberg to scrape through a series of exams - otherwise she'd stay down in school, being forced to repeat the year. No camping, no white-water rafting, no vacation at all. So it doesn't surprise anyone that the young witch is quite disgruntled when arriving at Altenberg Castle. Her roommate is a touchy unpleassant fashion victim and headmaster Quirin Bartels is so muddle-headed that he can't even remember the names of his students properly. But then Bibi makes friends with Elea, a girl wheelchair-bound since a terrible accident where she also lost her beloved parents. Now Bibi is determined to help the sensitive Elea, searching a way to heal her from her palsy legs.

