Arthur Brauss

Arthur Brauss has accumulated an impressive tally of acting credits, both on the domestic front and internationally. He has been directed by the likes of John Huston, Sam Peckinpah, Jack Arnold, Richard Brooks and Mark Robson. His co-stars have included Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Steve Martin, Burt Lancaster, James Mason and James Coburn. Tall, lean and sinewy, he has played his fair share of police officers on TV, but, for the most part, his stock-in-trade have been ruthless henchmen, double-dealing scoundrels, assassins, bank robbers and mercenaries.

An accomplished pole-vaulter in his youth (1954 German junior champion), he was a factory worker before a move to the U.S. on a sports scholarship from the University of Wyoming. There, he studied maths and economics and discovered an affinity for acting while on the college stage. Brauss returned to Germany in 1960, his fluency in English helping him find work with Radio Free Europe. As 'Art Brauss', he made his film debut three years later. From the beginning, he was heavily in demand for supporting roles in international productions: mainly action films like The Train (1964), Jack of Diamonds (1967), The Swiss Conspiracy (1976), Avalanche Express (1979) and Cross of Iron (1977). Brauss also featured in a couple of Jerry Cotton potboilers, played the member of a terrorist gang in Verrat ist kein Gesellschaftsspiel (1972), cold-blooded killer Abdul Carraco in the expensively made TV production Härte 10 (1974) and Charly Clayton, the avaricious owner of the Tivoli saloon in Lockruf des Goldes (1975) (a miniseries loosely based on works by Jack London). His role as vicious drug smuggler Candy Man in $ (1971) had originally been slated for Horst Frank, an actor with a similar predilection for villainous portrayals.

Brauss had a particularly prominent role as a murderous football player in Wim Wenders's off-beat, noirish crime drama The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972). More recently, he has featured as Russian chess master Viktor Yurilivich in the thriller Knight Moves (1992) and as King Ottokar in the fairy tale König Drosselbart (2008). For much of the 60s and 70s, however, he was true to form as the perennial heavy in TV series like Die fünfte Kolonne (1963), Okay S.I.R. (1972), Derrick (1974), Tatort (1970) and The Old Fox (1977). Aside from occasional forays into such lighter entertainments as Münchner Geschichten (1974) or The Black Forest Hospital (1985), Brauss has achieved lasting audience popularity as the veteran Chief of Police Richard Block in the long-running procedural police series Großstadtrevier (1986).

In addition to acting, he has provided the German synchronizing voice for stars like David Warner, Robbie Coltrane, Scott Glenn, James Caan and Max von Sydow.

Post-retirement (in 2014), the actor has spent his newly found spare time racing cars, making furniture, playing classical guitar, cooking and playing golf in a club which includes Franz Beckenbauer among its members. He has resided for some four decades in the Munich district of Schwabing. His wife is Marie Poccolin.