Entertainment

Sabin Tambrea was born in Romania in 1984 and emigrated to Germany in 1987 as the son of classical orchestra musicians. He began taking violin lessons at an early age and gained his first stage experience at the age of five. He was a multiple prize-winner at the 'Jugend musiziert' competition. At the age of nine, he appeared on stage for the first time without an instrument as a singer and actor at the Theater Hagen and was a founding member of the theatre’s youth theatre group.

In 2006, he began studying acting at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin, graduating with a diploma in 2010. Whilst still a student, he was engaged by Claus Peymann at the Berliner Ensemble, where he performed until 2018. There, he played numerous leading roles, including Peter Pan in Robert Wilson’s production and Prince Friedrich von Homburg in Claus Peymann’s farewell production. For his performances, he was honoured by the Theatergemeinde Berlin as Best Young Actor.

Sabin Tambrea made his film debut in 2013 as King Ludwig II of Bavaria. For this role, he received the Bavarian Film Award, the New Faces Award and a nomination for the German Film Award. This was followed by, amongst others, the Austrian thriller 'Ma Foli' (First Steps Award – Best Feature Film) and the remake of 'Naked Among Wolves', which won the German Television Prize for Best Film.

In the years that followed, he took on numerous leading and defining roles in cinema, television and streaming productions, including the ZDF series 'Ku’damm 56/59/63', 'Babylon Berlin', the title role in 'Narziss und Goldmund', the series 'Deutsches Haus' and the feature film 'In einem Land, das es nicht mehr gibt', for which he was honoured with the Günter Rohrbach Acting Award in 2022. The German-Romanian co-production 'Hackerville' was awarded the Grimme Prize; Tambrea also appeared in the feature film 'La Gomera' by Corneliu Porumboiu, which was screened in the competition section at the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2021, his debut work of fiction, 'Nachtleben', was published and entered the 'SPIEGEL' bestseller list in its first week of release. This was followed in 2024 by his second novel, 'Vaterländer', a family saga spanning three generations that explores themes of flight, origin and identity, which remained on the bestseller lists for over 20 weeks.

Most recently, Sabin Tambrea appeared as Franz Kafka in the literary adaptation 'Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens' (directed by Georg Maas and Judith Kaufmann) and in 'Heimweg', a film adaptation of a Sebastian Fitzek novel for Amazon Prime. He can currently be seen in the ARD series 'Oderbruch' and in the fourth series of the Ku’damm series ('Ku’damm 77'). Due for release are the feature films 'Kochschule Schwarz' by Dani Levy, in which he stars alongside Hannah Herzsprung and Florian David Fitz, and 'Schatten', in which he appears on screen alongside his wife Alice Dwyer.

© Marcus Höhn