Rainer Reiners

Rainer Reiners was born, the youngest of five children on a small farm in a tiny village in Northern Germany, where he lived a childhood of unimaginable freedom. At 15 he was forced to move to the Palatinate. There was a new father and he had to attend the high school. He became a left-wing radical, grew his hair long, learned to play the guitar, dropped out of school and sought his happiness in such unpretentious occupations as construction worker, miner and lumberjack. He didn't find it, either professionally or otherwise. He wrote love songs full of weltschmerz and just missed becoming the German answer to Leonard Cohen. Then he became a lighting technician, which enabled him to witness the wonderful one-man play, "The Double Bass", by Patrick Süskind. In 1985, he attempted to become a film director by studying advertising in Berlin, hoping to somehow become the German answer to Woody Allen. He also performed "The Double Bass" on stage and afterwards switched his field of study to acting at Die Etage, Berlin, a program from which he graduated in 1990. Since then, Rainer has worked in many theatre productions as well as in international films, TV movies and series.

Rainer Robinson

Rainer Robinson is known for Connie Lynn (2022).

Rainer Rohde

Rainer Rohde was born in Hamburg Germany and immigrated to the United States with his family. He is fluent in the German Language. He has been acting since 1980 and is a current member of SAG. He has performed in stage productions such as Sound of Music and Oklahoma at Tuachan theater and was the best Admiral VonSchreider in Sound of Music thanks to his German heritage.

Rainer Sarnet

Rainer Sellien

Rainer Sellien was born on November 6, 1963 in Celle, Germany. He is an actor and writer, known for The Reader (2008), Unknown (2011) and All the Money in the World (2017).

Rainer Silberschneider

Rainer Silberschneider is an actor, known for Frantz (2016).

Rainer Steffen

Rainer Steffen was born on May 29, 1943 in Kitzbühel, Austria. He is an actor, known for Avalanche Express (1979), Der lichte Grund (2016) and Die Wannseekonferenz (1984).

Rainer Werner

Rainer Werner is known for V for Vendetta (2005), Equilibrium (2002) and Æon Flux (2005).

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and even antigay, he completed 44 projects between 1966 and 1982, the majority of which can be characterized as highly intelligent social melodramas. His prodigious output was matched by a wild, self-destructive libertinage that earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema (as well as its central figure.) Known for his trademark leather jacket and grungy appearance, Fassbinder cruised the bar scene by night, looking for sex and drugs, yet he maintained a flawless work ethic by day. Actors and actresses recount disturbing stories of his brutality toward them, yet his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social misfits and his hatred of institutionalized violence. Some find his cinema needlessly controversial and avant-garde; others accuse him of surrendering to the Hollywood ethos. It is best said that he drew forth strong emotional reactions from all he encountered, both in his personal and professional lives, and this provocative nature can be experienced posthumously through reviewing his artistic legacy. Fassbinder was born into a bourgeois Bavarian family in 1945. His father was a doctor and his mother a translator. In order to have time for her work, his mother frequently sent him the movies, a practice that gave birth to his obsession with the medium. Later in life, he would claim that he saw a film nearly every day and sometimes as many as three or four. At the age of 15, Fassbinder defiantly declared his homosexuality, soon after which he left school and took a job. He studied theater in the mid-sixties at the Fridl-Leonhard Studio in Munich and joined the Action Theater (aka, Anti-Theater) in 1967. Unlike the other major auteurs of the New German Cinema (e.g., Schlöndorff, Herzog and Wenders) who started out making movies, Fassbinder acquired an extensive stage background that is evident throughout his work. Additionally, he learned how to handle all phases of production, from writing and acting to direction and theater management. This versatility later surfaced in his films where, in addition to some of the aforementioned responsibilities, Fassbinder served as composer, production designer, cinematographer, producer and editor. [So boundless was his energy, in fact, that he appeared in 30 projects of other directors.] In his theater years, he also developed a repertory company that included his mother, two of his wives and various male and female lovers. Coupled with his ability to serve in nearly any crew capacity, this gave him the ability to produce his films quickly and on extremely low budgets. Success was not immediate for Fassbinder. His first feature length film, a gangster movie called Liebe ist kälter als der Tod (1969) was greeted by catcalls at the Berlin Film Festival. His next piece, Katzelmacher (1969), was a minor critical success, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim. It featured Jorgos, an emigrant from Greece, who encounters violent xenophobic slackers in moving into an all-German neighborhood. This kind of social criticism, featuring alienated characters unable to escape the forces of oppression, is a constant throughout Fassbinder's diverse oeuvre. In subsequent years, he made such controversial films about human savagery such as Pioniere in Ingolstadt (1971) and Whity (1971) before scoring his first domestic commercial success with Händler der vier Jahreszeiten (1972). This moving portrait of a street vendor crushed by the betrayal and his own futility is considered a masterpiece, as is his first international success Angst essen Seele auf (1974) (Fear Eats the Soul). With a wider audience for his efforts, however, some critics contend that Fassbinder began to sell out with big budget projects such as Despair (1978), Lili Marleen (1981) and Lola (1981). In retrospect, however, it seems that the added fame simply enabled Fassbinder to explore various kinds of filmmaking, including such "private" works as In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden (1978) and Die dritte Generation (1979), two films about individual experience and feelings. His greatest success came with Die Ehe der Maria Braun (1979) (The Marriage of Maria Braun), chronicling the rise and fall of a German woman in the wake of World War II. Other notable movies include Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972), Faustrecht der Freiheit (1975), Satansbraten (1976) and Querelle (1982), all focused on gay and lesbian themes and frequently with a strongly pornographic edge. His death is a perfect picture of the man and his legend. On the night of June 10, 1982, Fassbinder took an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills. When he was found, the unfinished script for a version of Rosa Luxemburg was lying next to him. So boundless was his drive and creativity that, throughout his downward spiral and even in the moment of his death, Fassbinder never ceased to be productive.

Rainer Wöss

Rainer Wöss was born on May 22, 1962 in Linz, Austria. He is an actor, known for Murer: Anatomie eines Prozesses (2018), Dogwatch (2019) and Die Badewanne (2016).