One of Germany's top stars: actor Tom Schilling's best roles

As an 18-year-old, Tom Schilling and Robert Stadlober form an irresistible duet in the film adaptation of Benjamin Leber's novel of the same name. Schilling's performance in "Crazy" earns him a Bavarian Film Award for best young actor, and a place as a poster boy in countless teenage bedrooms. Now Schilling can choose his roles.

Schilling's next role in the college movie genre offers a much tougher challenge: In "Before the Fall" (2004), he plays the sensitive Albrecht, a young man who must attend a Nazi elite school and is thereby forced to shoot escaped Russian POWs. He tries to fight against the system - unsuccessfully - and finally commits suicide.

In the three-part TV series "Generation War" (2013), Schilling is a good-hearted young soldier until he is brutalized by the savagery of war. "Stern" magazine called his performance "electrifying." But the production not only won plaudits. Polish viewers, for example, criticized the series for depicting Polish resistance army members as anti-Semitic.

In "Oh Boy" (2012), Schilling wins unanimous praise for his portrayal of university drop-out Niko, who wanders aimlessly through the streets of Berlin as well as through his own life. The role brings him several best acting awards, including at the German Film Awards - and a nomination at the European Film Awards.

Tom Schilling (left) once again demonstrates his versatility in "Death to the Hippies - Long Live Punk" (2015). The fact that Schilling was a punk in his youth helped the actor transpose into a 19-year-old who leaves the provinces, and the hippies, for wild, unhinged West Berlin, where he gets a mohawk and hangs out with Blixa Bargeld and Nick Cave, from a then underground band, The Bad Seeds.

In his most recent success, the TV series "The Same Sky" (2017), Schilling, who was born and raised in East Berlin, plays a GDR agent whose mission is to seduce a British secret service employee in West Berlin. Playing a Stasi Romeo agent, as these East German spies were called, gave Schilling the opportunity to showcase his more subtle, minimalist acting technique.