Ken Duken was born on the 17th of April 1979 as a son of an actress and
a doctor in Heidelberg / Germany. He started to learn acting from his
stage actress mother Christina Loeb. Later he took courses by James
Reynolds and Bruce McDonald but he never attended drama school.
Before starting his career on television in 1997 Ken acted throughout
different stage plays, for example "Visit from an old Lady". In the
year 1998 he got a hold of his first leading role in the film "Land of
Milk and Honey" (direction: Friedemann Fromm), and played side by side
with Franka Potente and Heiner Lauterbach. BILD, largest daily paper in
Germany, called him a "Shootingstar" with great talent and charisma.
In 2000 Ken convinced in the role of Mark, a young guy confined to a
wheelchair, in the motion picture "Gran Paradiso" from Miguel
Alexandre. This film was nominated for the German Film Award. After
some German productions, for example "Nightshift" (ZDF, direction: Lars
Becker), Ken took part in the comedy "100 per cent" from Simon
Verhoeven.
Throughout the last years Ken Duken above all was shooting abroad
together with great actors like Peter O'Toole, Klaus Maria Brandauer,
Max von Sydow and Dominique Pinon. With the Italian production "Hidden
Children" (2003, direction: Leone Pompucci) he gained great success and
won amongst others the French Movie-Award at the 18th "Reincontres de
Television de Reims".
In 2003 Ken and some friends founded the film production company "Grand
Hotel Pictures". The successful debut's name was "From another Point of
View" (direction and production), which premiered on the 15th of April
2004 in Munich, starring his wife Marisa Leonie Bach and Dominique
Pinon, famous French actor (Alien4, Amélie...). At the same time he put
on Music-Videos (e.g. Curse - "Gangster-Rap", Oomph - "Das letzte
Streichholz") and began to write the script for his first own film
"Waiting for Eve".
In 2005 Ken played the leading role in the movie "Another league"
(produced by Wüste Film, winner of the Berlinale 2004 with "Against the
wall") for which he was assigned as best actor at the Comedy-Festival
in Monte Carlo. Furthermore he took part at the big Italian production
"Karol" (film version of the life of the deceased Pope John Paul II
(Karol Woytila)) for Channel 5 (Italy) which achieved an audience
rating of 47%. In Poland this film beat all records and was more
successful than "Star Wars 3" or "War of the worlds".
In March 2005 Ken Duken was awarded with the Grimme Award for his role
in "Kiss and Run" before he started filming "Störtebeker" (a movie
about the life of the most famous German pirate) in May 2005.
Afterwards he played the character Teddy Schrader in Lars Becker's
"Nightshift". In summer 2006 Ken played the role of Anatol Kuragin in
the international production "War & Peace", based on the novel of
Tolstoj, directed by Robert Dornhelm, where he had to shoot in
Vilnius/Lithuania and St. Petersburg and afterward he was shooting
another international production in Morocco - "Ali Baba", directed by
Pierre Aknine. After leading roles in the movies "Distanz" and
"Gellert", which were produced by Grand Hotel Pictures, he took part in
the Italian production "Il Commissario de Luca", directed by Antonio
Frazzi and played Ben Winter, a war returnee from Afganistan in the tv
movie "Willkommen zuhause". In 2008 Ken won his second Grimme Award for
"Eine andere Liga" and the Franz Hofer Award. In the same year he
played the name part in the fairy tale "Koenig Drosselbart", co-starred
with Gary Dourdan in the international production "Fire", played the
leading role in "Das Unglueck von Ueberlingen" (directed by Till
Endemann), a tv movie about the air plane crash in Ueberlingen in 2002,
and took part in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds". In 2009 he
won the "Bayerischen Fernsehpreis" for "Willkommen zuhause" in the
category "best actor TV-movie". At the moment he co-stars with Till
Schweiger in his new movie "Zweiohrkueken.
