Capital: | € 8.5 million |
Age: | 71 |
Born: | July 22, 1948 |
Country of origin: | Emden, Germany |
Source of wealth: | actor |
Last updated: | 2022 |
Short introduction
Otto Waalkes, regularly referred to as Otto for short, complete call Otto Gerhard Waalkes (July 22, 1948, Emden) is a German comic, cartoonist, actor, musician, director and grasp of simultaneous dubbing. He is the writer of a small elephant that become invented below the call “Ottifant” and has grow to be a key discern in lots of children’s books, CDs and cartoons.
Early life
Otto grew up withinside the own circle of relatives of the artist Karl Waalkes and his spouse Adele collectively together along with his older brother Karl-Heinz, who, not like Otto, did now no longer go away his domestic in Emden. The mother and father have been religious Baptists and contributors of the Evangelical Free Church, whose college Otto attended Sunday college. At the age of 12 he have become the proprietor of his first guitar, and in 1964 he first seemed with The Rustlers to carry out a Beatles song. Otto become the leader, singer and guitarist. The institution toured thru East Frisia for 5 years.
Career
Otto exceeded the college leaving examination (Abitur) on the Emden Gymnasium in 1968 and become admitted to the school for artwork schooling on the Hamburg University of Fine Arts years later. In Hamburg Otto achieved for the primary time at the level of the Danny’s Pan Folk Club, in which he ought to earn 5 marks for a 10-minute performance. He then lived in a flat percentage with fourteen neighbors, consisting of Udo Lindenberg and Westernhagen. To finance better schooling, Otto persevered to take the level in small clubs.
Otto’s very own level function become prompted via way of means of a few German comedians who preceded him, which includes Heinz Erhardt and Ingo Insterburg. Otto started out to enhance his look with puns, parodies, satire, humorous gestures and grimaces. In his in advance hits, Otto translated sketches from the Woody Allen applications of the Nineteen Sixties and changed and shortened them slightly. The venues to which he become invited step by step have become greater spacious, for instance the convention middle Westfalenhallen in Dortmund.
In 1972 Otto Waalkes met his destiny coping with director Hans Otto Mertens. Since no present organization desired to put up Otto’s music, Waalkes and Mertens based their very own label “Rüssl Räckords” after a massive live performance via way of means of “The Rustlers” in Hamburg, with which the primary LP become recorded and offered withinside the equal yr with a movement of 500,000.
In 1973 Otto started out a ten-yr collaboration with the author and artist Robert Gernhardt, first in a tv show, later Gernhardt posted Otto’s books and become concerned withinside the screenplays of his films. In the subsequent years Otto performed plenty in films, dubbed the jobs of numerous characters from overseas films (normally animated) into German, directed his thematic suggests on many German TV stations, become a screenwriter, director, creator and illustrator of revealed books. On August 1, 1987, Otto opened a residence close to the metropolis corridor of Emden in a transformed antique pharmacy, that’s referred to as “Dat Otto Huus” in East Frisian dialect. There is a museum on the primary and 2nd flooring of this residence, which includes memorabilia from the early days of Otto’s career.
In the 1989 comedy, Otto is a foreigner from Friesland. According to the plot of the movie, the pleasant and adventurous town manual Otto Gross lived in a lighthouse and offered the vacationers a nearby souvenir – a mini lighthouse glued from bathroom paper. Otto’s function-gambling characters have been: “Reporter Harry Hirsch”, “Frau Sucherbier”, “Oberförster Pudlich” and “Herbert von Karamalts”. Otto’s maximum well-known discern become a small elephant referred to as “Ottiphant”. Otto started out to encompass the elephant, which become at the beginning painted for the layout of statistics and CDs, in comedian memories that he posted in numerous newspapers. A collection of drawn cartoons have been step by step created primarily based totally on comics with the Ottifant and his relatives.
Career highlights
Otto is taken into consideration one of the maximum a success representatives of German humor. In 2004, Otto’s movie “7 Dwarfs – Men Alone withinside the Forest” become visible via way of means of nearly seven million visitors in German cinemas. In 2006 the sequel “7 Dwarfs – Forests aren’t enough” acquired the Golden Screen Movie Award.
In the tv collection “Our Best Comedians.” On the ZDF in 2007 Otto took one of the pinnacle 3 of the nominated fifty actors, consisting of Lorio and Heinz Erhardt.
Prime Minister of Lower Saxony Stefan Weil, who provided Otto with the “Lower Saxony Order of Merit”, quoted critical questions from the comic in certainly considered one among his tv suggests: “Where will we come from?” Where are we going? And what are we doing now? “.
The following phrases have been heard withinside the 2015 anniversary exhibition entitled “Otto – born to play the fool” (Otto-Born to fool), which become proven on ZDF at the fiftieth anniversary of Otto’s creative activity:
“Many of Otto’s sketches, songs, and rhymes which have lengthy been a part of a collective reminiscence and cultural history are recited via way of means of coronary heart via way of means of adults and children.”
Famous quotes
Comedy is usually a sport of expectation and surprise. …
And from the chaos a voice stated to me: “Smile and be happy it is able to get worse!” And I laughed and become happy – as it were given worse. …
The truth that I made my movie become merely mineralogical – I wished gravel.