Tom Schilling

Schilling grew up in the formerly East German borough of Berlin Mitte. He was discovered at the age of 12 by stage director Thomas Heise, and cast in the stage play Im Schlagschatten des Mondes (Under the shadow of the Moon) at the Berliner Ensemble theatre company, which he stayed with for the next four years to play in other productions as well. Acting jobs earned him enough money to move out of his parents' home when he was 18 and still at school. He left school with an Abitur certificate.

Schilling's screen acting debut was in 1996, when he appeared in the Sat.1 TV series Hallo, Onkel Doc! at the age of 14. He was later cast in the theatrical film Paradise Mall (1999) where he played alongside Franka Potente, Daniel Brühl and Heiner Lauterbach, but the breakthrough for him came with his performance in Crazy (2000, directed by Hans-Christian Schmid), for which he received the Talented Young Actor Award of the Bayerischer Filmpreis.

In the critically well-received 2004 film Before the Fall (German title: Napola – Elite für den Führer, directed by Dennis Gansel) Schilling appeared alongside Max Riemelt as a young and fragile student at a Nazi elite school (Napola). In 2006, he received a scholarship for the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York, where he studied for a semester.

Schilling was later given the role of the young Adolf Hitler in Urs Odermatt's 2009 film Mein Kampf (the UK DVD release is marketed as Dawn of Evil: Rise of the Reich), co-starring Götz George.

Schilling originally wanted to become a painter and study art after school. In a 2008 interview he said he was not much of an extrovert, and that to him having to deliver oneself up on a day-to-day basis was a major disadvantage of being in the acting profession.

In 2006, Schilling had a son by a woman whose name is not known. In spring 2014 he and his partner, the assistant director Annie Mosebach, had a son, followed by a daughter in January 2017. In early 2019, Schilling and Mosebach got married.