An Unlikely Sex Symbol, Poised for a Breakthrough

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/movies/franz-rogowski.html

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BERLIN — At first glance, the actor Franz Rogowski is an unlikely candidate for movie star. The 32-year-old German is cerebral and quiet in conversation, and he has a scar and a lisp resulting from a cleft lip operation in his childhood. Though he seems more suited to playing a tough guy in the background, Mr. Rogowski has emerged over the past few months as one of Germany’s most admired leading men.

At this year’s Berlin Film Festival, known as the Berlinale, Mr. Rogowski had lead roles in two major entries: “Transit,” by the German director Christian Petzold, which is in theaters in France and Germany, and “In the Aisles,” an understated love story set in a wholesale supermarket. “In the Aisles” opens in Germany this month and has been sold for distribution in the United States.

Mr. Rogowski also won a European Shooting Star award, given every year to promising young European actors, and last week took home a Lola, the German equivalent of an Oscar, for his performance in “In the Aisles.” He now seems poised for an international breakthrough.

Sitting in a cafe in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, dressed in a gray jumpsuit, black baseball cap and scuffed white sneakers, Mr. Rogowski described the unexpected blessings of his childhood scar. “I think everywhere we see perfect surfaces, and when something breaks through the surface, it is somehow interesting. Though it doesn’t make me a better actor.”

He added that the American actor Joaquin Phoenix had had the same procedure. “I can only recommend people with a cleft lip become actors,” he said.

Mr. Rogowski also admitted to being a bit uncomfortable with his recent success. “When I take the subway and see a headline that I am ‘dominating’ the Berlinale, I feel bad,” he said, then sarcastically joked, “It’s so clear that I am a sex symbol, I just need to accept it.”

This cheerfulness is a far cry from his character in “In the Aisles,” one of the Berlinale’s best-received titles, in which Mr. Rogowski stars opposite Sandra Hüller from “Toni Erdmann” — another bittersweet German comedy. He portrays Christian, a nearly mute, heavily tattooed employee at a wholesaler in a downtrodden part of the former East Germany.

Mr. Rogowski plays the role with fine-tuned blend of machismo and vulnerability. “People don’t really know you are working so hard,” he said of playing largely nonspeaking roles. “It’s about how you stand, how you listen — it’s much harder to do a little than to do a lot.”

He has only a few more lines in “Transit,” a time-jumbling modern-day adaptation of a novel about World War II, in which he plays a refugee trying to get exit papers to escape a coming invasion. In an email, Mr. Petzold, who also directed “Barbara” and “Phoenix,” described Mr. Rogowski as a “great actor” who is able to balance “sadness and confidence, coldness and empathy” like “a dancer.”

Anja Dihrberg, a veteran German casting director, helped cast Mr. Rogowski in Terrence Malick’s upcoming World War II film “Radegund.” She said by phone that Mr. Rogowski stood out in Germany for his physical performance, which she believed might be a lucky side effect of his speech impediment: The vast majority of German actors focus on being able to recite large amounts of text, she said, “but he is the exception.”

“You can lose yourself in Franz’s face and eyes,” Ms. Dihrberg added.

Mr. Rogowski said he was not allowed to reveal his role in “Radegund,” which tells the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector, but Ms. Dihrberg described it as “a figure that is required to suffer.” She said that Mr. Malick was intent on overcoming scheduling conflicts to secure Mr. Rogowski’s participation. “We did everything we could to make it possible for him to play that role, because of Mr. Malick,” she said. “Terrence fought for him.”

Growing up in the university town of Tübingen, in southern Germany, Mr. Rogowski was bullied for his lisp and performed poorly in school, the result of what he said was an undiagnosed attention disorder. He also clashed with his mother, he said, because of an excessive pot-smoking habit. At 16, he left school and moved in with a friend.

A conversation with a social worker led him to consider acting as a career, and after a stint at an acting academy in Stuttgart, he spent a year at a clown school in the mountains of southern Switzerland. There, he learned the skills of a street performer — including juggling and commedia dell’arte, an improvised form of Italian theater.

“Sometimes I went missing for two, three weeks without providing a reason,” Mr. Rogowski said. After a year, administrators told him he should continue developing his talent, but “to please do so at a different school,” he recalled.

Mr. Rogowski later moved to Berlin, where he worked as a dancer and street musician, and began acting in student films and small German features, including the single-take thriller “Victoria,” which went on to become a cult hit. He eventually beat out numerous French actors for the role of Pierre, the scion of an ill-fated real estate family in Michael Haneke’s “Happy End,” playing opposite Isabelle Huppert. One of the film’s most memorable scenes, a karaoke performance of Sia’s “Chandelier” that culminates in a series of unhinged acrobatic moves, was a startling showcase for Mr. Rogowski’s physical acting style.

Mr. Rogowski described Mr. Haneke as “very patient, very tender,” then paused and added, “That was a bit of a joke.” The actor recalled doing a scene on camera while Mr. Haneke watched from a monitor in a tent on set, and “from the outside you just hear noises, like ‘uhh’ or clapping.” If Mr. Haneke was unhappy, Mr. Rogowski recalled, the director “wouldn’t say unpleasant things, but you would notice he is suffering physically.” (In a succinct email, Mr. Haneke described Mr. Rogowski as “good” and praised his mixture of “virility and sensitivity.”)

Mr. Rogowski is currently balancing film roles with theater work at the Munich Kammerspiele, which is known for its experimental productions. When he first began working there three years ago, he struggled to find an affordable apartment, and, in a stunt, he appeared on German television with a T-shirt bearing his phone number, saying he was looking for a place to live. “The only guy who reacted to the T-shirt was a guy from Kenya who offered me to sleep in his kitchen,” he said. “A very nice guy.” The theater eventually helped Mr. Rogowski find an apartment.

Mr. Rogowski said he was working on improving his English so he could work outside Europe, but he said he had few complaints about his current circumstances. “If I look at myself and my personality and upbringing, I think I can’t be an actor for all my life, it’s a ridiculous profession,” he said. “But at the moment, I love it.”