Torsten Münchow
stage, film and TV actor, theatre director, voice actor, radio-theatre and dubbing director, was born in Berlin-Wedding.
Torsten Münchow has been seen on stage in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and all over Germany, as well as in Vienna and Gda?sk. He also works extensively in film and television.
The films he has appeared in include Keep On Running, Superbrain, with Oliver Reed, Der Film deines Lebens (The Film of your Life) and Die Liebe Deines Lebens (The Love of your Life). His TV credits feature German and Austrian TV series such as Tatort, Soko, Eine Couch für alle (A Couch for Everyone), Der Alte (The Old Fox), Derrick, and Anna Maria, eine Frau geht ihren Weg (Anna Maria. A Woman Goes Her Way; 1994-98).
On stage, he has starred in over ninety productions, creating roles such as Ernest Hemingway in Rolf Hochhuth’s play for solo actor, Death of a Hunter, Norman (Dave) in Ladies Night, the German version of Anthony McCarten’s The Full Monty, Sir Toby Belch in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, John Proctor in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Lennie in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men,and Everyman in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Everyman, to name but a very few.
In 2012, Münchow took on the leading role of Prince OTTO VON BISMARCK in a very well-known, two-part series for German TV, Die Reichsgründung & Die nervöse Grossmacht, directed by Bernd Fischerauer (1943-2017). He starred opposite Esther Schweins in the documentary feature Viking Women (Germany, 2014), which won the Silver World Medal for the Best Docudrama at the New York Film Festival in 2015. He also starred in Father Rupert Mayer (US/Germany, 2014), appearing alongside Stacy Keach and Daryl Hannah, and in Die Gefangenen der SS (The Prisoners of the SS; Germany, 2014).
As a voice actor, Torsten Münchow has lent his sonorous, dark, smoky voice to Brendan Fraser since 1993 and to Ice-T since 1994, as well as to Michael Madson and Antonio Banderas. The long list of German-language audiobooks which feature his resonant tones and invariably command great attention includes Rolf Hochhuth’s Death of a Hunter, Alex Kershaw’s The Liberator and Francis Winwar’s Napoleon and the Battle of Waterloo, to mention just three.
Münchow also enjoys great popularity on the anime scene, where he thrills younger listeners in cult series such as Hellsing, where he voices Alucard, and Drifters, where he features as the Black King.
He has directed fifteen radio plays and audiobooks and, as a dubbing director, he has more than eighty feature films and series to his credit.
After the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall, Münchow was the first ‘West German’ theatre director to celebrate a directing success in the former German Democratic Republic with his staging of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love at the Anklam Theatre in the East German town of Anklam (1990). That was followed by Gerhard Woyda’s Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Hoffnung (Society with Limited Hope) at the Renitenz Theater Stuttgart, Sam Shephard’s Fool for Love at Teater Sörmland, Sweden, Harry Schärer’s musical, Spacedream at the Space Dream Musical Theater, Berlin, and many more productions. They include a musical based on motifs drawn from Hugo von Hofmannsthal and entitled Jederman, the King for the Salzach Festival, Laufen (2007) and William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for the same event in 2018.
Münchow’s acclaimed staging of Rolf Hochhuth's Sommer 14 for the Berliner Ensamble at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in August 2014 was reported across the media throughout Germany, Austria and Swizerland (http://www.sommer14.com/).
From 2009 to 2010, he hosted the ARD-alpha talk show alpha FORUM, interviewing the then Federal Minister, Peter Ramsauer, Ph.D, and a multitude of well-known German actors and artists, including Harald Dietl, Cordula Trantow, Markus Meindl, Ellen Schwiers, Katerina Jacob, Gil Ofarim, Ottfried Fischer, Jürgen Tarrach, Markus Meindl, Pascal Breuer and Theatre Director Margit Bönisch (1942-2017).
Torsten Münchow is a passionate builder of cultural bridges between Eastern and Western Europe. Over the past five years he has collaborated with the Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Gda?sk, Cornelia Pieper, initiating and bringing to fruition a number of international projects aimed at furthering German-Polish understanding through culture. In September 2016, he founded and ran the successful 1st INTERNATIONAL MUSIC & THEATRE DAYS in Ko?obrzeg, with a programme featuring musicians and actors from Poland, Italy, Great Britain and Germany.
That same year, Consul General Pieper invited him to premiere his solo theatre piece, Rolf Hochhuth’s Death of a Hunter during the German Week at the Wybrze?e Teatr in Gda?sk, where the audience celebrated his role as Ernest Hemingway with a standing ovation. Bavarian Radio and Television (BR) also became aware of his bridgebuilding work and made a TV documentary, Double Homeland about him. The film was first broadcast in July 2016.
In December 2017, he became the first German director to direct a play in Poland’s Pomeranian region since the Second World War. The January 2018 premiere of his production of Max Frisch’s Biedermann and the Arsonists for the Nowy Teatr im. Witkacego (New Witkacy Theatre) in S?upsk received a standing ovations from the Polish audience and thus Münchow succeeded in building another cultural bridge between Poland and Germany.
In June 2018, he and a Polish colleague, Magda Bo?, presented Antje Vollmer's book, Doppelleben, at the European Solidarity Centre in Gdansk and he also gave a reading at the University of Gdansk’s Centrum Herdera (Herder Centre), with violinist Adam Vogelsinger of the Koszalin Philharmonic providing a musical setting for the text.