Austrian theater actor Peter Simonisek, who gained international fame for his role as a mischievous but loving father in the 2016 Oscar-nominated German film Toni Erdmann directed by Maren Aade, He died at his home in Vienna on May 29. he was 76 years old.
His wife, Bridget Kerner, said the cause was lung cancer.
Simonisek was a member of the Burgtheater, also known as the Burgtheater, a venerable Viennese theater and one of the oldest and largest ensemble theaters in the world.
“He was one of Austria’s last great stars,” said Vienna-based Australian director Simon Stone, who has cast Simonisek in the 2021 play Compliczen at the Burgtheater. Simonicek was a well-loved public figure, recognizable on the streets of Vienna by taxi drivers and passers-by, and more famous than most movie stars, he said.
Indeed, he was easy to recognize. He was a handsome, shaggy-haired bear man who used his physical weight to great advantage.
A.J. Goldman, director of German theater for The New York Times, said his size “gave his performances an enormous grandeur” and that “it turned out to be tragic.” or give it a Falstaff-esque absurdity.”
in comedy “Toni Erdmann” In the story of a workaholic management consultant named Inez (played with fragile humor by Sandra Hüller), Mr. Simonisek plays Inez’s frustrated father Winifred, a retired music teacher who pretends to be Toni. to release from the occupation that oppresses the soul. Erdmann is her boss’ swoony corporate consultant who turns everything she holds dear.
Written and directed by Ade, the film captivated critics at the Cannes and New York Film Festivals and was nominated for the 2016 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (losing to Iran’s ‘The Salesman’). ). Writing for The New York Times, A.O. Scott called it “a study into the underlying power of shame” and described Simonicek’s character as a “slapstick superhero.”
“Sometimes he’s a clown,” Stone said of Simonicek. “And sometimes he becomes an authority figure and an imposing leader. He intends to humiliate himself to the brim. I used it as a sort of canvas on which I could paint any kind of abomination or anomalous quality that any of the characters needed.”
In Mr. Stone’s play “Komplizen” (not properly translated as “accomplice”), Mr. Simonisek played a businessman facing liquidation as the world turns against him and his ilk. .
Stone writes the script during rehearsals to encourage the actors to approach the material with a sense of freshness and to create room for improvisation. It was a daunting process, but Simonicek said he did it brilliantly and cheered on the younger cast members as they struggled to practice. The production also required a rotating stage, which made rehearsals even more demanding.
“You can achieve anything if you corner Peter,” Stone said. “His brilliance was contagious. He shared it with the cast every day. It’s about not losing.”
Peter Simonisek was born on August 6, 1946 in Graz, Austria. Simonisek told an interviewer last year that his mother was a housewife, his father a dentist and wanted his son to study medicine. But when he saw a play of Hamlet as a teenager, he said he was “lost”.
He attended the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Graz and found work as an actor in Switzerland and Germany. He became a star in 1979 when he joined the innovative ensemble theater Berlin He Schaubuhne. He joined Barr in his 2000.
In addition to winning the European Film Award for Best Actor for Toni Erdmann, his recent film appearances include: “Interpreter” Slovak movies of 2018, “Human Scale” German film about colonial atrocities in Africa. I came out in February.
Besides his wife who is also an actorSimonicek is survived by three sons, Max, Kaspar and Benedict, and two grandchildren. His first marriage to Charlotte Schwab ended in divorce.
Shortly before his death, Simonisek had received critical acclaim for playing the patriarch of a Pakistani-American family in Ayad Akhtar’s production of The Who and the What at Berlin’s Renaissance Theater. , opened in 2018. (Renaissance canceled the show because Mr. Simonisek fell ill a few weeks ago).
The play tells the story of a pious and charismatic Muslim man whose daughter writes a novel about the Prophet Muhammad, scandalizing a traditional community and upending their relationship.
Akhtar, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2013 and is the author of 2020’s critically acclaimed novel, The Song of the Fatherland, said it was the longest-running and most popular of his plays. rice field. And, in contrast to the 2014 US production, the all-white cast was due to the cultural and racial make-up of Berg’s ensemble. As he told The Times’ Goldman in 2018, this is a scenario that might have stalled years ago. But Simonicek and his castmates persuaded him.
“What was remarkable was this strange alchemy,” Akhtar said in a telephone interview. “Simonisek at the time was the father of Austrian theater, a father figure to the Austrian people, playing this conservative Muslim father.
“The notoriously ascetic Viennese crowd was in tears on the opening night,” he continued. “Maybe not as much as I do” – Akhtar said he was sobbing onstage at the curtain call – “but not too far. It was one of the best moments of my career. ”
At the time of Simonisek’s death, Akhtar was in the process of writing a play for Simonisek. Mr. Simonisek, he said, was “a full-souled, precise, captivating actor with heart and generosity as much as his talent.”
