# Helmut Griem

Helmut Griem (6 April 1932 – 19 November 2004) was a German film, television and stage actor, and director.

## Biography

Born in Hamburg, Griem was primarily a stage actor, appearing at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Munich Kammerspiele, and finally in the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, also in Munich.
Griem became well known to international audiences as the diabolic SS-officer Aschenbach in The Damned. His role in the Academy Award-winning film Cabaret (1972) as the wealthy bisexual Baron Maximilian von Heune is probably his best-known international performance.
Other performances include his work in The McKenzie Break, and Ludwig and Breakthrough. Among his many film and TV appearances was one in NBC's Peter the Great as the Tsar's lifelong friend and "right hand" Alexander Menshikov, alongside Maximilian Schell. He starred in the television mini-series The Devil's Lieutenant directed by John Goldschmidt, adapted by Jack Rosenthal and based on the novel by the Hungarian-American playwright and author Maria Fagyas (1905–1985), for Channel 4 and ZDF.
Griem performed in many classic roles from both the German and English-language repertoire. Later in his career Griem turned to theatre direction, including Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill. Before his death, he had planned to direct the Botho Strauss play, Die eine und die andere (This One and The Other). Griem twice won the Bambi Award: in 1961 and in 1976.
He died in Munich in 2004, aged 72.

## Theatre

| Title | Author | Role | Director |
| Intrigue and Love | Friedrich Schiller | Ferdinand | Willi Schmidt |
| Leonce and Lena | Georg Büchner | Leonce | Hans Bauer |
| As You Like It | William Shakespeare | Orlando | Willi Schmidt |
| The Glass Menagerie | Tennessee Williams | Tom | Willi Schmidt |
| Richard II | William Shakespeare | Title Role | Hans Lietzau |
| The Cherry Orchard | Anton Chekhov | Lopachin | Hans Lietzau |
| The Philanthropist | Christopher Hampton | Philipp | Dieter Dorn |
| The Prince of Homburg | Heinrich von Kleist | Title Role | Hans Lietzau |
| The Maids | Jean Genet | Claire | Dieter Dorn |
| Philoctetes | Heiner Müller | Title Role | Hans Lietzau |
| Die Räuber | Friedrich Schiller | Karl Moor | Hans Lietzau |
| My Fair Lady | Lerner and Loewe | Professor Higgins | August Everding |
| Troilus and Cressida | William Shakespeare | Thersites | Dieter Dorn |
| Faust | Johann Wolfgang Goethe | Title Role | Dieter Dorn |
| Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Edward Albee | George | Martin Meltge |

## Filmography

| Year | Title | Role | Language | Director | With... | Notes |
| 1960 | Officer Factory [de] | Oberleutnant Krafft | German | Frank Wisbar Written by Hans Hellmut Kirst | Horst Frank | |
| 1961 | Girl from Hong Kong | Glenn Dierks | German | Franz Peter Wirth | Akiko Wakabayashi and Hanns Lothar | |
| 1961 | Barbara | Doctor Poul Aggersø | German | Frank Wisbar | Harriet Andersson | |
| 1961 | The Dream of Lieschen Mueller | Jan | German | Helmut Käutner | Sonja Ziemann, Martin Held and Cornelia Froboess | |
| 1962 | Oggi a Berlino [it] (Today in Berlin) | Hans | Italian | Piero Vivarelli Written by Piero Vivarelli, Giuseppe Isani | | |
| 1963 | Because, Because of a Woman | Johann Muller | French | Michel Deville | Mylène Demongeot, Marie Laforêt and Jacques Charrier | |
| 1968 | Bel Ami [de] | Georges Duroy | German | Helmut Käutner | | TV film |
| 1969 | The Damned | Aschenbach | English | Luchino Visconti | Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin and Helmut Berger | |
| 1970 | The McKenzie Break | Kapitänleutnant Schlüter | English | Lamont Johnson | Brian Keith | |
| 1972 | Cabaret | Baron Maximilian von Heune | English | Bob Fosse | Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Joel Grey and Fritz Wepper | |
| 1972 | The Morals of Ruth Halbfass | Franz Vogelsang | German | Volker Schlöndorff | Senta Berger | |
| 1972 | Ludwig | Count Dürckheim | English | Luchino Visconti | Helmut Berger, Romy Schneider, Gert Fröbe, Trevor Howard and Silvana Mangano | |
| 1975 | Children of Rage | Dr. David Shalom | English | Arthur Allan Seidelman | Olga Georges-Picot | |
| 1976 | The Clown | Hans Schnier | German | Vojtěch Jasný Written by Heinrich Böll | Hanna Schygulla and Hans Christian Blech | |
| 1976 | The Desert of the Tartars | Lieutenant Simeon | Italian | Valerio Zurlini | Vittorio Gassman, Laurent Terzieff, Max von Sydow, Philippe Noiret, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Fernando Rey, Giuliano Gemma and Francisco Rabal | |
| 1976 | Voyage of the Damned | Otto Schiendick | English | Stuart Rosenberg | Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Max von Sydow, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Orson Welles, Katharine Ross, Ben Gazzara, Fernando Rey, José Ferrer, Maria Schell and Julie Harris | |
| 1978 | Germany in Autumn | | German | Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorff, Edgar Reitz, Alexander Kluge, et al. | | |
| 1978 | The Glass Cell | Phillip Braun | German | Hans W. Geißendörfer | Brigitte Fossey and Bernhard Wicki | |
| 1978 | Mannen i skuggan [sv] | Willi Mohr | Swedish | Arne Mattsson | Slobodan Dimitrijević | |
| 1978 | Les Rendez-vous d'Anna | Heinrich Schneider | French | Chantal Akerman | Aurore Clément | |
| 1979 | Breakthrough | Major Stransky | English | Andrew V. McLaglen | Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger and Curd Jürgens | |
| 1979 | The Hamburg Syndrome | Sebastian | German | Peter Fleischmann | Fernando Arrabal | |
| 1980 | Put on Ice | Lehrer Brasch | German | Bernhard Sinkel | Ángela Molina and Martin Benrath | |
| 1981 | Malou [de] | Martin Rethmann | German | Jeanine Meerapfel | Ingrid Caven and Ivan Desny | |
| 1981 | Sting in the Flesh [de] | Hans | German | Heidi Genée | Barbara Lass | |
| 1981 | The Temptation [pl] | Ludwig | German | Krzysztof Zanussi | Maja Komorowska and Eva Maria Meineke | TV film |
| 1982 | The Magic Mountain | James Tienappel | German | Hans W. Geißendörfer | Christoph Eichhorn, Marie-France Pisier, Rod Steiger and Charles Aznavour | |
| 1982 | Elective Affinities [fr] | Eduard Otto | French | Claude Chabrol | Stéphane Audran | TV film |
| 1982 | La Passante du Sans-Souci | Michel Wiener | French | Jacques Rouffio | Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli | |
| 1984 | The Devil's Lieutenant | Judge Advocate Kunze | English | John Goldschmidt | Ian Charleson, Barbara De Rossi and Claudine Auger | TV film |
| 1986 | Peter the Great | Alexander Menshikov | English | Marvin J. Chomsky, Lawrence Schiller | Maximilian Schell, Vanessa Redgrave, Laurence Olivier, Omar Sharif, Lilli Palmer, Ursula Andress, Hanna Schygulla, Elke Sommer and Trevor Howard | TV miniseries |
| 1986 | Boundaries of Time: Caspar David Friedrich | Carl Gustav Carus | German | Peter Schamoni | Sabine Sinjen and Hans Peter Hallwachs | |
| 1987 | The Second Victory | Karl Fischer | English | Gerald Thomas | Anthony Andrews, Max von Sydow, Mario Adorf and Renée Soutendijk | |
| 1988 | Faust [de] | Faust | German | Dieter Dorn (Filmed theatre performance) | Romuald Pekny [de], Sunnyi Melles and Cornelia Froboess | |
| 1989 | A proposito di quella strana ragazza | Ugo De Magistris | Italian | Marco Leto | Joely Richardson | |
| 1989 | Hard Days, Hard Nights | Kronschneider | German | Horst Königstein [de] | Rita Tushingham | |
| 1990 | The Plot to Kill Hitler | Field Marshal Erwin Rommel | English | Lawrence Schiller | Brad Davis and Ian Richardson | TV film |
| 1990 | Shooting Stars | Gutke | English | Chris Bernard | Sharon Duce and Gary McDonald | |
| 1991 | Landläufiger Tod | Judge Sonnenberg | German | Michael Schottenberg | Paulus Manker and Mercedes Echerer | TV film |
| 1993 | Charlemagne, le prince à cheval | Widukind | English | Clive Donner | Christian Brendel [fr], Anny Duperey and Frank Finlay | TV miniseries |
| 1993 | Verlassen Sie bitte Ihren Mann! | Pertussini | German | Reinhard Schwabenitzky | Elfi Eschke | |
| 1995 | Brennendes Herz | Gustav Regler | German | Peter Patzak | Dominique Sanda, Thomas Kretschmann, Dieter Laser and John Phillip Law | |
| 1997 | The Lost Daughter | Rolf Sutter | English | Roger Cardinal | Richard Chamberlain | TV film |
| 2000 | Lourdes [it] | Auguste La Fontaine | Italian | Lodovico Gasparini [it] | Alessandro Gassmann, Stefania Rocca, Andréa Ferréol and Sydne Rome | TV film |
| 2001 | Death Train to the Pacific [de] | Oscar | German | Hans Werner [de] | Anja Kling | TV film |