Richard van Weyden

Richard van Weyden was born in Heiligenwald/Saar in 1966. Due to his father's work (a collier and specialist for welding technology), he spent the first years of his childhood in Nancy, Hamburg, Berlin, Hong Kong and Cape Town until his school enrollment in Frankfurt am Main. He quit school went to Rome and worked for several month as a shoeshine boy in a shoe-store. Nevertheless, he spent most of his time in the cinema watching movies. Back in Germany he joined different independent actor ensembles, touring the Repuplic of Germany, Austria and Switzerland whilst working as a prop master, light-tone technician, scene painter. He went to Paris for a while and lived in an artist commune. In 1986 Michael Cacoyannis (Alexis Sorbas) discovered him in the actor's canteen at the Staedtischen Buehnen Frankfurt, instructed him and immediately gave him a part in his opera production of Iphigenia. This special experience led to the decision to become an actor and a time of education to many different places followed. Since then he works as an actor for cinema, TV and theatre and also lent his voice to commercials and to famous characters (Conan, Sherlock Holmes, Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean...) for computer-games in Germany. In his free time, he writes short story's, sketches unusable furniture, works as a sculptor and painter and improves upon his English, French and Italian language skills.