Samuel Koch

Biography

Samuel Koch was born in Neuwied on 28th of September 1987. During his national service, he worked at the PR department of the German-French brigade. Since his early childhood, he had been a gymnast participating in numerous competitions. On 4th of December 2010, Samuel Koch was a candidate in one of Germany’s most well-known live game shows with a stunt that involved him wearing bouncy stilts and doing a salto over the roofs of several cars. He fell and injured himself so critically that he became a tetraplegic, leaving both his arms and legs paralysed. Despite this, he did not give up on his wish to become an actor. Already before his accident, he had worked as assistant to the director Achim von Borries and played a small part as a soldier in "4 Tage im Mai" ("4 Days in May", DE/RU/UA, 2011). He continued studying acting at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, which he had only started to do three months prior to his accident. In spring 2012, his autobiographical bestseller "Zwei Leben" was published, for which he received the media award "Goldener Kompass".

After graduating from University in summer 2014, he became a member of the ensemble at the Staatstheater in Darmstadt appearing in several plays such as Kleist's "The Prince of Homburg" (2014/15), Schiller's "The Robbers" (2015) and Goethe's "Faust" (2016). He played a recurring character in the daily soap "Sturm der Liebe" and a small part in Til Schweiger's critically acclaimed feature film "Honig im Kopf" ("Head Full of Honey", 2014). In 2015, Koch's second book "Rolle vorwärts" was published. In addition to his other activities, he also has been touring with singer-songwriter Samuel Harfst.

In "Draußen in meinem Kopf" (2018), he played his first lead role as a young man suffering from muscular dystrophy who builds a close and trusting relationship with his caretaker. The film won the Prize of the Youth Jury at the Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis and had its theatrical release in Germany in April 2018.