Charles Régnier

Charles Régnier
Born	Charles Friedrich Antonio Régnier (1914-07-22)22 July 1914 Freiburg, Germany
Died	13 September 2001(2001-09-13) (aged 87) Bad Wiessee, Germany
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1949–2000
Spouse(s)	Pamela Wedekind (1941–1986) (her death) Sonja Ziemann (1989–2001) (his death)

Karl Friedrich Anton Hermann Charles Regnier^[1] (22 July 1914 – 13 September 2001) was a German actor, director, radio actor and translator. (Some sources inaccurately place Regnier's birth year as 1915.) He appeared in more than 135 films between 1949 and 2000. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was one of the busiest German theater and film actors. His idiosyncratic, decidedly intellectual style and his sometimes slightly mocking acting, distant demeanor became his trademark and made him a much sought-after character actor.

Life and career

Régnier owed his name of his grandfather, a native Frenchman. Regnier came as the first child of Anton Karl Regnier and Emile (Milly) Maria Friederike Harrer in Freiburg im Breisgau to the world.^[1] His father was general practitioner and Charles initially had the desire to become a doctor. It was his dream as his childhood idol, Albert Schweitzer, to travel the world and help people.

Regnier was born in Strasbourg and Badenweiler on where the grandparents owned the hotel "Schloss Haus Baden" maternal. After the Suizid Of the father's suicide in 1924 moved the mother with four sons first after Heidelberg, to Montreux at the Lake. As the mother with 1929 tuberculosis, the family decided to move to Davos. In the Switzerland he first Luftkurort Charles met with a number of celebrities, including the writer Alfred Henschke alias Klabund, who awakened Regnier interest in literature and theatre. Together with his brothers, Charles led comedy "XYZ - game threes" in the private living room of Klabunds. His first acting performance was starring "Countess Y" contained therein. "As an actor I since then never again had the opportunity as a lady to occur, but often to show" how "it occurs as Lady", Regnier writes in his personal memoirs.

The early death of his father meant that the family was slowly impoverished. After several moves, the mother decided in increasingly smaller dwellings with the sons of 1930 Berlin to move. Here, Regnier met the writer Ernst pale, who was almost completely blind. He regularly visited the sick man to read to him from books. Ernst Blass had an intellectually and artistically formative influence on the young Charles. Greatest poverty despite Régnier, occasionally to take acting lessons. Little later (probably 1932) he played even a first film role in the narrow "La lettre", turned the Regnier with friends in Prague. The film tells the touching story of an unemployed, who obtained a first prize in the lottery, but tragically loses his Los license.

In 1933, Hitler was already in power, wanted to visit Regnier at last a national drama school. But he fell several times through the trials for the Reich Theatre Chamber. "He should not come back please", it urged him after the last test. When the Nazis began to reshape the German culture operation according to their ideas, Regnier 1934 was arrested and interned one of the first German concentration camps - because of his homosexuality in the KZ Lichtenburg. After nine months we sacked him, he - like many other prisoners - having must sign to report anything about the terrible events in the concentration camp. Traumatized by the captivity, Regnier defected after Italy, where he opened a small souvenir shop in Portofino. Because business was slow, Regnier returned to Berlin and finished a private acting school there.

The first commitment was Regnier 1938 at the theatre at Greifsw. Here he the actress and singer Pamela Wedekind met, daughter of the playwright Frank Wedekind, who he married on June 21, 1941 in Berlin.^[1] 1941, Regnier by Otto Falckenberg was appointed to the ensemble of the Munich Kammerspiele, where he served until 1958. Regnier as a drama teacher at the newly founded Otto-Falckenberg-Schule worked in 1946.

Selected filmography

References

External links

• Charles Régnier at the Internet Movie Database