LargoWinch.netDiego Wallraff
Diego Wallraff was born on November 30th, 1961 in Barranquilla, in Colombia. He is married and father of a small boy. Diego worked as a film actor, on television and at the theatre in Europe as well as in the United States.
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Youth
Diego grows between Colombia, the country of his mother, and Germany where from his father come originally from and that he last escaped during adolescence to search for a better life far from the events of World War II which ruined its childhood. At the age of 7 years old, Diego has already made twice the voyage in and out between both countries before his family becomes finally established in Hamburg where he passes the 20 next years. These moves don't help his schooling and to avoid the school he decides to become an auto mechanic, attracted by his passion of the nice American cars of the 50s-60s. After a hard selection, he begins his training for the services of the Hamburg's Police, repairing cars, trucks, motorbikes...
During his free time, he plays the american football. He is one of the founder members of the first club of American football in Hamburg and he trained the team during several years. They played in national league 1!
He is also part of two Rock n Roll and Rythm'n Blues music groups: he plays the guitar and Blues Harp harmonica and he begins finally to appreciate life in Germany where, until then, he didn't feel really at home.
After a successful training, he immerses himself again into studies to become a plane mechanic, but he begins wondering really what he wants or make of his life. Finally, he stops everything and follows a friend in London to work in a small Mercedes concession . It is there that he realizes that he can't content himself with an existence of mechanic and that he needs to change his life.
He comes back to Germany where the military service is waiting for him, and it gives him all the leisure to think of his future.
Classical ballet
He then strikes up a friendship with a group of American dancers in the Ballet of Hamburg and one day he finds himself invited to attend a representation of Romeo and Juliet... He is blown by the beauty of classical ballet (without speaking about splendid ballerinas!) and he just has a desire: to see them again. Next time, he attends the show behind the scene and, there, it is the animation which reigns behind the stage that fascinates him. He wants more and more and it is a revelation: The magic and spirit of the theatre touched him! When he comes back to the barracks, he knows that he wants to become actor. He begins immediately searching for drama schools and preparing to pass auditions... He is accepted in the music Academy of the arts and stage of Hamburg and when he begins doing courses he knows that he finally found what enthralls him in life.
He joins the Deutsche Shauspielhaus (national theatre) of Hamburg in 1985. For his first experience, he plays and dances with his brother Cuco in Ghetto, a musical piece on holocaust, staged by Peter Zadek.
In 1985 still, he plays and always dances in the comedy-ballet The bourgeois gentleman conducted by Jérôme Savary.
In 1986, he auditions for the famous musical Cats in which Cuco participates during almost one year, but after all is said and done, after three recalls, Diego decides to stay with pure theatre... Though...
In 1987, he finds Zadek for Andi, a modern musical rock and antifascist comedy.
Always in Deutsche Shauspielhaus of Hamburg, he has the opportunity to work again and again directed by Michael Bogdanov (not Grishka nor Igor, but the big English movie director!) notably in Romeo und Julia in 1990 or Hamlet in 1991.
Television
After a serious wound in the shoulder during a repetition of the musical Guys and Dolls in 1991 Diego feels more attracted by the television and cinema. He puts an end to his contract with the national Theatre of Hamburg after six years of good and loyal services and leaves for Los Angeles to try to make his place under the Hollywood sun but he often returns to shoot in Germany, where his career doesn't limit itself to the stage.
Indeed, he gets his first title role in 1986, in a science fiction TV film, Das Go! Projekt. The film director, Olivier Hirschbiegel, in search of an actor for the role discovers him in his school. And Diego is then the happiest of men!
Cinema
He makes his debut at the cinema in 1987 in Der Madonna-Mann of H.C. Blumenberg: An Australian geologist who makes a stop in Hamburg is taken to be a killer by a young woman who asks him to eliminate a gangster (Michael Lonsdale). When the gangster gets to the bottom of things, the duet doesn't have more than to try to avoid death... Diego plays an entertaining cameo role, that of a Spanish truck driver who spends his time to sing and speak and that makes a bite of behaviour to both stars of the film, Renee Soutendijk and Marius Müller Westernhagen.
He also appears in the role of Roberto Zenga, an extremely professional Italian killer come to fulfill a contract in Austria in the episode «Jeu de construction» of the European series Eurocops in 1990.
Diego is barely installed in Los Angeles when he comes back in Germany to play his first title role at the cinema this time, in Schattenboxer: Eddi, an ex-convict who wants to help a friend without papers, comes to unsettle the well-oiled mechanics by cops who devote themselves to a drug trafficking by using expulsion of refugees which didn't get the political asylum. The film comes out in 1992, just as Ginevra, a film of which Diego made in the south of France while he was still part of the theatre of Hamburg. His Manuel's role in this strange work which visits again the famous passionate triangle of the arthurian legend leaves him the memory of a very amusing experience even if he has never seen the result!
In 1995, it crosses the Atlantic once again for a new title role in a TV film adapted from a novel of Rosamunde Pilcher: he interprets a selfish and cruel type which employs and abuses its charm to manipulate his cousin in Das Ende eines Sommers.
He also regularly returns to participate in the German series: He turns three times in a police series Tatort (3 roles of villains) between 1991 and 2000, he appears in Die Partner (1995), Schimanski (1997), Die Straßen von Berlin (1998), Mordkommission (2000)... He also participates in two TV films extending the adventure of the series Das Traumschiff (the German version of the love boat !) that allows him to shoot on earth in Sydney, in Australia and at sea between Hong Kong and Thailand, or else in Southern Africa and in the Caribbean... Nice to be the photographer or the pianist on a boat cruise, especially if as a bonus the character meets love!!!
In 1997, Diego participates in Winnetous Rückkehr, a TV film in two parts which brings back to the screen the Indian Winnetou of mythical German western series of the sixties. He plays a half-bred named Steve Shagan and has a good time during the filming in the south of Spain beside Pierre Brice, the French actor who interprets thefamous Apache.
But especially Diego represents during 12 episodes the character of Andi Sanchez in the Delta Team (1999). He loves this action series and regrets its end, but it is at the end of this filming that he sees himself offering Simon's role in Largo Winch...
With such an activity in Europe, it is easy to forget that Diego is established in the USA and however, there also his career is impressive!
His first contract is a cameo role in the pilot of a Warner Bros sitcom called Interns in Heat who relates the adventures of a hot team of hospital personnel and it was never broadcasted anywhere!
He also appears in various series such as Acapulco Heat (Acapulco agency) (1993), Renegade (The rebel) (1995), I love Lupe (1997), Cracker (1997)...
But his first really stimulating adventure on the other side of the Atlantic starts when he meets the film director vénézuélo-NewYorker Betty Kaplan who offers him to play the role of José, the brother of Antonio Banderas in Of Love and Shadows (Spanish original title: De amor y de sombras). For Diego, the dream became reality... The argentino-américano-spanish film, came out in 1995, was made in Argentina in English. He relates the meeting and love story of an opponent to the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile (Banderas) and a well-bred girl (Jennifer Connelly) who lived until then in a peaceful and protected world.
Diego has later on the opportunity to act again under the direction of Betty Kaplan in Doña Bárbara in Spanish this time, but he abandons the project because he doesn't want to risk being somewhere in South America at the time of the birth of his son.
He also shoots in Morocco in 1994 under the direction of Roger Young in an international co-production which is part of a series on the Bible: Joseph is a TV film in two parts which tells the story of the son of Jacob and his 11 brothers... He represents one of these brothers, Icassar, and acts along Ben Kingsley, Martin Landau and Monica Bellucci.
He follows at the cinema with The Perez Family in 1995 which allows him to work with the big Indian film director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay! this doesn't remind you of anything?). This romantic tragicomedy paints the adventures of a Cuban political prisoner who leaves his country to find his family exiled in Miami and finds himself decked out with a "wife" as unexpected as resourceful... Diego represents the ultra-protective brother of the legitimate wife and he savours the pleasure of shooting with Anjelica Huston, whose class he admires!
In 1997, we find him in the role of a detective in the thriller Exception to the Rule, the history of a diamond cutter who deceives his wife and is victim of blackmail, with Sean Young, Kim Cattrall and ERIC MCCORMACK.
With They come at night in 1998, Diego plays in a strong film which leans over the relation of a Salvadorian political refugee having lost his family and survived torture and of his psychotherapist who finds it difficult to manage the grim reality of her own life. He represents the tortured then executed husband who appears in the flashbacks which intersperse the film.
In the TV film DeadLocked (2000) where the father of a black young man accused of rape and murder takes the court in hostage to make open again the inquiry and exculpate his son, Diego represents the commander of anti-terrorist special force, the Sergeant DeLucca.
A bite of madness in 2001, thanks to Unleashed: the film relates the adventures of a computer expert of the L.A. police which discovers that the only witness of a murder whom he investigates is the dog of the victim who also proves to be be the only dog in the world to speak and to practice martial arts! Diego represents a detective there...
Finally, in 2002 he endorses the role of a mean robber in a TV film called Rush of Fear, written and directed by Walter Klenhard, with Rosanna Arquette and Chris Potter. A young woman tries to save her husband kidnapped by diamond thieves who want to recover their booty gone astray. The TV film is packed with action and rebounds but with all what precedes, we suspect that it isn't done to scare Diego!