Thure Riefenstein


Thure Riefenstein is an actor, director, writer and producer. He was born in Germany with an Austrian-Serbian background.

Biography / film / theatre

Riefenstein graduated 1989 as an actor in Germany, worked for five years on stage in repertory and Berlin Broadway theaters and continued studying acting and film in New York and Los Angeles. He since has been working internationally for cinema, television and theater in the United States, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Austria, Russia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Serbia, Morocco and Turkey.
Important features in leading parts are the US-Canadian feature Sophie with John Rhys-Davies and Deborah Kara Unger. In the Golden Czech Lion Award winning WW2 drama Dark Blue World, he played for director and Academy Award Winner Jan Sverák and in the action thriller Hostile Takeover he worked with director Carl Schenkel. In the US-German feature Baltic Storm he took a leading part aside Greta Scacchi, Jürgen Prochnow, and Donald Sutherland. In 2012 he worked with Academy Award Winner Steven Soderbergh in Behind the Candelabra and played with Michael Douglas, Matt Damon and Dan Aykroyd. In 2017-2018 he played August on the feature Willie and Me directed by Eva Hassmann, starring country song icon Willie Nelson and in 2018 he finished shooting the part of the Captain in the epic WW2 movie Torpedo, aka U-235, directed by Sven Huybrechts.
Mr. Riefensteins acclaimed TV-work includes the French period movie Julie, chevalier de Maupin, where he starred with Marisa Berenson, Pierre Arditi and Gottfried John and which achieved an 'International Emmy Award' nomination for best foreign film. The TV production series Kommissarin Lucas with Thure Riefenstein as the male leading detective, achieved the highly acclaimed German Adolf Grimme Award nomination for Best Film. In the Film Böseckendorf, the Night a Village Vanished he was nominated in the category Best Lead Male Actor and was also semi finalist for the International Emmy Award 2010 in the same category as Best Lead Male Actor. He guest starred in the US-Series Leverage with Academy Award Winner Timothy Hutton and also in The Brink where he played with Academy Award Winner Tim Robbins. In the Sci-Fi series 12 Monkeys he guest starred as SS-Sturmbannführer Waesch in the episode Die Glocke with Barbara Sukowa and Amanda Shull.
Mr. Riefenstein also starred in the European action drama mini-series Crusaders with Armin Mueller-Stahl and Franco Nero, the successful feature comedy 666: In Bed with the Devil, the Canadian film Criminal Instinct with Victor Garber or in the science fiction feature Ainoa.
Riefenstein is a trained theater actor and has performed theater-plays such as Shakespeare's Pericles, Brecht's Life of Galileo, Walter Jens's The Downfall, Ariane Mnouchkine's Mephisto and also in musicals such as Linie 1 or the revue The Blue Angel where he played with Ute Lemper at the Berlin Broadway theater Theater des Westens and the Hamburger Schauspielhaus. The legendary show was directed by European theater icons Peter Zadek and Jérôme Savary. Riefenstein also worked with Bertolt Brechts former assistant Peter Palitzsch on Pericles at the Berliner Ensemble and with Vlad Mugur on Carlo Goldoni's The Liar. His latest theatre work was in Captains Greedys Carnival , a production of Tim Robbins Actors Gang.
He lived in London to practice in fringe theatre and in New York to work with Kristin Linklater. His American debut was in the New Yorker production of Jean Genet's The Maids for the Berkshire Theatre Festival. In Los Angeles he studied acting at the ACI based on Lee Strasberg's and Sandford Meisner’s working techniques and worked with several coaches such as Doug Warhit, Sam Christensen, Bruce Davison or Michelle Danner. He trained in the Actors Gang, Culver City with Cynthia Ettinger and Tim Robbins were he worked as an associate member for a year.
Riefenstein also is an established Voice Over Actor and works as director, producer and writer for film.
He is married to Patricia Lueger and has a son named Paris Aaron Lazar Riefenstein.

Filmography (excerpts)