Tobias Moretti – about fame and farming

Tobias Moretti is considered one of the most charismatic actors in Austria. He has gone long ways from serial star to sophisticated artist. And he has also literally gone steep ways: high above in the mountains, in the south of the Tyrolean capital of Innsbruck, Moretti has run a 400-year-old farm since 1997. On his organic farm he keeps 20 cows and if necessary he mucks out at 7am - something he enjoys a great deal. "Since I’ve run this farm, my life has changed.
I discovered a different world behind the stage and beyond the spotlights and suddenly you think completely different about for what you spend your energy, time and life."


Tobias Moretti was born on 11 July 1959 in Gries, Province of Tyrol. After studying composition at the Vienna University of Music and Applied Arts, he went to Munich to train for the stage at the renowned Otto-Falckenberg Schule. After graduating he was a permanent member of the Bayrische Staatsschauspiel ensemble (Frank Baumbauer) and played the Munich Kammerspiele (Dieter Dorn) from 1985 to 1995 where he earned critical praise in a sweeping variety of productions, appearing in Brecht’s ’Man is Man’, Achterbusch’s ’Der Frosch’ (The Frog) and playing the lead role in Shakespear’s ’Troilus and Cressida’.

Since 1989 Tobias Moretti has turned increasingly towards the film genre: examples are Felix Mitterer’s ’Piefke Saga’, a satire on the relationship between Germans and Austrians, Rodolfo Dalvais’ ’I Due Ponti’ (1988) and a first engagement with Xaver Schwarzenberger in ’Der Rausschmeißer’ (The Bouncer). Besides having successfully performed at the Vienna Burgtheater, Moretti appeared in the TV series ’Kommissar Rex’ from 1994 to 1997 which gained him worldwide recognition. Despite his success, Moretti has always been cautious to remain true to himself, not letting the media, fame and fortune corrupt his character. "You are responsible for what you do, even though as an actor you can only partly make your own decisions. You are in front of the camera and eventually you get to see the film which can become something like surrender. And this sort of exposure continues on all of these awful events at which you are presented like some kind of deluxe pet – that’s not my thing.”

Tobias Moretti did one film after the other, among them the thriller ’Ein Hund kam in the Küche’ (A Dog Came into the Kitchen) and the historical epos ’Andreas Hofer – Die Freiheit des Adlers’ in which he plays the Tyrolean national hero Andreas Hofer. Moretti is described as a person with ’extraordinary sensitiveness" which he proves when working with top directors such as Fassbinder, Bergman, Tabori and Dorn. Moreover, he also played the Vienna Burgtheater.

In the 2005/2006 season Moretti will stage Mozart’s early work ’La Finta Giardiniera’ at the Zurich Opera House. The opera will be conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt who says about Moretti, “Moretti is a person with a great feel for music, with whom you can talk to like to a musician. He is married to a musician which presumably talks primarily about music and farming with him. And if a person is so connected to nature like him, music is very close."

Moretti was awarded prizes many times. ’Kommissar Rex’, for example, earned him the Bavarian Film Prize in 1995, ’Krambambuli’ the Adolf Grimme Prize in 1999 which he won again for his performance in ’Tanz mit dem Teufel’ (A Dance with the Devil) in March 2002. In 1999 he received the Romy for most popular serial star. In 2001, 2003 and 2004 Tobias Moretti was chosen Austria’s most popular actor and was presented with the Romy TV Audience Prize.

From March to June 2004 Moretti co-starred with Sebastian Koch in ’Speer and Er’ (The Devil’s Architect). Directed by Heinrich Breloer, this three-part biographical docu-drama is about the relationship of Hitler and his Third Reich’s chief architect Albert Speer. Moretti plays Adolf Hitler in this 12 million euro production, a role for which Moretti kept a Hitler moustache for months. To hide it from the public, Moretti also grew an underlip beard on days off the set. To prepare himself for his role as Hitler, Moretti read countless books and traced the story of the mass murderer Hitler by listening and watching a vast array of audio tape and film documents. "As an artist I have no morals", says Moretti. “In order to perfect your performance you sometimes have to be uncompromising and merciless, even unfair towards your own feelings. If I want to play Hitler, first of all I have to defend him, no matter how paradox and evil this may sound."

Tobias Moretti describes himself as "vivacious".  He loves exciting leisure pursuits to relax himself, such as white water canoeing or motor biking. Earlier in his life he used to regard himself a ’disciplined slob’, in the meantime there is little chaos left. By running his own production company, Moretti has become a financially independent actor who also loves to explore limits: for Porsche he sometimes raced in the Super Cup and became 12^th in Imola/Italy in 1997. It was this passion for fast cars which made him crash into a wall with 190 km/h. "Car racing is my very own way of handling fear and failure", he says. "And failure is the interesting thing, be it in art or in life. Moretti is well conscious about the limited time we have on earth, therefore he cannot cope with people who do not understand those with passion, obsession and ambitions. "I admit I have some kind of fear about just leading an average life."

Luckily, Tobias Moretti has a profession which is just made for searching new challenges and having time to think and contemplate. If not before he comes home to his farm, something emotional happens to him. "I think of nature as a wonderful teacher. Just like a rose does not bloom and scent for the sake of delighting us, a human becomes aware of his relativity in nature. The things out there have been there before us and still will be there after us. In those places where people still have farm work to do, the day has a healthy rhythm as every hour of the day reminds of a different work which has to be done and you have to adapt to this rhythm without much talking, without much philosophy. This I regard quite healthy. Here in the mountains nobody has to go to the gym, to the spa, go on diet or become a jogging maniac." Life on the organic farm in the Tyrolean village of Omesberg with his motorbike in the stable is so to say the ’supporting’ role he loves to play most in the great ’movie of life’.