The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's Daniel Brühl Isn't Your Typical Actor

Daniel was born in Barcelona, Spain on June 16, 1978. His mother, Marisa González Domingo, is Spanish, while his father, the late TV director Hanno Brühl, was of German descent but born in Brazil. The family moved to Cologne, Germany shortly after he was born.

Daniel can speak Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, and English but also understands Catalan. He is also one of the most prolific actors when it comes to dubbing his own work. When dubbing, Daniel will often provide input and said that, “When you dub in different languages you can play with the strings and the different qualities. And you cannot even [completely] control it because, by itself, Spanish dubbing will always sound a bit more passionate, the German always sounds cold and drier, and, well, you know French. . .”

This one is mainly just here because it blew my mind. In his youth, due to his prowess for languages, Daniel dubbed “a lot of very trashy films – dubbing Jackie Chan in his worst B-movies and C-movies.” Eventually he would be the voice of Lightning McQueen in the German version of Cars. He would not return to voice the character in the movie’s sequels.

Daniel got his start in 1995 on a German soap opera called Verbotene Liebe as a street kid named Benji. However, his breakout role didn’t happen until 2003 in the German film Good Bye, Lenin!, which won him the European Film Award for Best Actor, the European Film Audience Award for Best Actor, and the German Film Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. Since then he’s appeared in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), In Transit (2008), Inglorious Basterds (2009), Rush (2013), The Fifth Estate (2013), Colonia (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), and will be in the upcoming The King’s Man.

In 2011, along with Atilano González – who he met in 2003 at the Berlin Film Festival – Daniel opened a tapas bar called Bar Raval (named after Barcelona’s Raval district). He considers Bar Raval a second home, saying in an interview that, “When I came to live in Berlin, I didn’t know any Spaniards I could speak with, and only spoke the language with my family. But in the bar I can speak Spanish and immerse myself in Spanish culture – eating, drinking, speaking, reading, and watching ‘la liga’.”

Daniel started dating Felicitas Rombold, who along with being a former model is a psychotherapist, in 2010. The couple eventually had a son named Anton Hanno in 2016 and announced they were expecting their second child in 2020. The pair got married during filming of season one of The Alienist.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier marks only the second time he’s revisited a project, the first being season two of The Alienist. On what he was feeling when told they wanted him back as Zemo, “I was incredibly thrilled to go back because I remember that I had a lot of fun being in something completely different and getting to explore the MCU and become part of that. I have the fondest memories of collaborating with all of these wonderful actors, and to see Sebastian Stan again, and Anthony Mackie, this time around, and to come back to something which, on the one hand, felt common and known, and on the other hand, being something completely new and something fresh.”