Detlev Buck, 61, is unique. Hardly any other actor in the German-speaking world embodies such a high level of recognition as the former farmer, who was born in Bad Segeberg. Wherever it says Detlev Buck, there is also Detlev Buck in it. Always.
This applies both to his work as an actor, to his productions as a director, to his writing as a screenwriter and even to his coordination as a producer. His typical humor, his often extravagant way of playing, his sometimes bizarre dialogues and his sometimes bizarre visualizations are so typical that you immediately feel taken away. Provided you like Buck’s idiosyncratic style, which sometimes seems a bit over-the-top to his (few) critics.
Nevertheless, his works have had a permanent place in the German film landscape for decades – and it is no longer possible to imagine life without them. Heaped with awards, Buck is now dedicating himself to a project that is unusual for him: Surprisingly, for the very first time in his long career, he was drawn to a leading role in a “Tatort” episode.
In the Münster crime thriller “The Man Who Fell into the Jungle” with the equally strange main characters Bourne (Jan Josef Liefers) and Thiel (Axel Prahl), he plays – of course – a strange character whose vita becomes increasingly strange as the film progresses crystallized.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t his first “crime scene” excursion: in 2021 he took over the direction of the Charlotte Lindholm crime thriller “Everything comes back”. Many observers probably still remember this film as the Udo Lindenberg “crime scene”. Maria Furtwängler, in her star role, came into the focus of murder investigators after a weekend planned as a romantic adventure at Hamburg’s Hotel Atlantic got completely out of hand. Udo Lindenberg himself contributed two songs during the 90 minutes and can be seen several times – as well as numerous Lindenberg doubles.
Detlev Buck also had a mini-appearance in his “Tatort” as – of course – an eccentric brothel owner, but he can only be seen in it for a few minutes. Nevertheless, he naturally gave this “crime scene” his inimitable and, above all, artistically valuable thumb. In the latest Münster “crime scene,” however, his presence is even more omnipresent than in the Lindholm crime scene. Simply because Detlev Buck is present in front of the camera in almost every scene.
After graduating from high school, doing community service and working on his parents’ farm in Schleswig-Holstein, Detlev Buck started his film career in the early 1980s with a small role in the Wolfgang Fischer film “What must be, must be”. He made his first film at the age of 21, after which he studied at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin from 1985 to 1989.
He celebrated his breakthrough with the Til Schweiger hit comedy “Männerpension” in 1996, for which he directed, wrote the script and also took on one of the leading roles. Other milestones in his career included “Herr Lehmann”, “Sonnenallee”, “NVA”, “Männerhort”, “Mängelexemplar” and “Rubbeldiekatz” from 2011.
In recent years, Buck has primarily devoted himself to the successful children’s film series “Bibi
