Antoine Monot Jr. (German: [anˈtwaːn moˈnoː]; born 22 June 1975 in Rheinbach, West Germany) is a Swiss-German actor and film producer with both German and Swiss citizenship. He had his breakthrough with the film Absolute Giganten in 1999 and became known to a wider audience especially through his work as a testimonial for technical trade chain Saturn. Since 2014, he has appeared as an advocate in the relaunch of the TV series Ein Fall für zwei.
Contents
Life
Childhood
Monot was born in Rheinbach, Germany, as the son of composer and conductor Jean-François Monot and actress Gisela Monot. Due to his parents’ professional lives, the family moved places on a number of occasions before he was seven years old. His mother then took up a job as a teacher at the Rudolf Steiner boarding school Loheland near Fulda and Monot visited the school until he was 14, before first moving to Hochstadt where he attended the Free Rudolf Steiner school in Frankfurt am Main and then to Unterägeri near Zug in Switzerland.
Monot has two sisters, Elise Hofner and Jeanne Monot.
Acting career
At the age of nearly 16, Monot left school to study directing at the Zurich University of the Arts. During his final school days, he was cast for the film Jazz (1994). The film was directed by Daniel Helfer in Zurich and Wuppertal. After that, Monot exclusively acted on theatre stages until 1996 – at first in the independent scene under the directorship of Volker Lösch, who had left the ensemble of the Theater am Neumarkt Zurich in order to make his director’s debut with Gerettet in 1994. The two Lösch productions Vatermord and Der große B also featured Monot. After that, well-established theatres took notice of Monot and he played at the Schauspielhaus Zürich (Der Krüppel von Inishmaan), the Theater am Neumarkt Zürich (Raststätte oder Sie machens alle) and at the Theater Basel, among others. In 1996, Monot, who until this point had exclusively acted on theatre stages in Switzerland, attempted to make inroads into the German film and television market. His first roles were appearances in episodes of the German TV productions SK-Babies and as a patient in Alphateam. In 1997, he was invited to the casting for the German film Absolute Giganten, which was to be young actor Sebastian Schipper’s debut as director. With Stefan Arndt and Tom Tykwer, he also found two producers to help get the movie off the ground with their film company X-Filme Creative Pool. The casting process took more than a year, and after the second round in spring 1998, Monot was accepted to play the role of “Walter” alongside Frank Giering, Florian Lukas and Julia Hummer. Shooting commenced in Hamburg on 10 August 1998, and this film is considered to be his breakthrough.
Further TV and cinema productions followed, such as Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Das Experiment (2001), Christian Zübert's Lammbock (2001), and Robert Schwentke’s Eierdiebe (2003). On the small screen, he was to be seen in Hat er Arbeit? by Kai Wessel as well as in Wolfsheim by Nicole Weegmann. In 2004, he made Der Wixxer (English: The Trixxer) in Prague, together with Bastian Pastewka, Oliver Kalkofe, Olli Dittrich, Anke Engelke and Christoph Maria Herbst. In 2005, he starred as “Moemme Bief” in Till Franzen’s film debut A Quiet Love at the side of Hanna Schygulla and Dominique Horwitz. In 2006, he was to be seen in the comedy Heavyweights by Marcus H. Rosenmüller. The film Resturlaub followed in 2011, based on a novel by Tommy Jaud.
Since 2013, Monot has portrayed the mostly silent salesman “Tech-Nick” in an advertising campaign for the consumer electronics retail chain Saturn
On 6 September 2014 the thriller Who Am I had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Since 2014, Monot has played the advocate Benjamin “Benni” Hornberg in the TV series Ein Fall für zwei together with Wanja Mues. Monot also acted as Gian in the film Der Kreis (English: The Circle).
Business career
In 1998, Monot founded Creative Artists Management PLC in the course of which he represented actors and actresses from the German-speaking film industry, at first actively as an agent, and then as a consultant to the company from 2000. Creative Artists Management was dissolved in 2005.
On 18 August 2004 Monot founded TYPO3forum.net, a website devoted to the Content Management System (CMS) TYPO3. With 150,000 visitors per month (as of August 2010), it is one of the largest TYPO3-related communities. He stood down as the forum’s director in 2013.
In early 2005, he founded the annual Zurich Film Festival together with Karl Spoerri and Nadja Schildknecht, and was its artistic director until 2009. From 2008 until 2009, Monot was in charge of film production at Condor Films. He founded Zuckerfilm Limited, headquartered at the Bavaria Film studios in Grünwald near Munich, together with director Daniel Krauss and Franz Meiller in 2009. The first joint production Wo es weh tut was filmed in Mombasa, Kenia, in 2009/2010. The second feature film, the comedy Kaiserschmarrn, was shot by the Wörthersee lake, Austria, and in Munich, Germany, from 20 September to 31 October 2010. The first documentary film to be produced by Zuckerfilm was Scissors&Glue in 2011, which was directed by Helmut Schuster. The film was screened at the FLIFF Festival in Fort Lauderdale, USA.
The Deutscher Schauspielerpreis (German actor awards), awarded for the first time in 2012, started life as an initiative by Monot from the year 2010. It has since been awarded annually by the Bundesverband der Film- und Fernsehschauspieler (Federal Association of Film and TV Actors) in six categories. At the first awards, he hosted the evening together with Stefanie Sick and was a member of the jury. Prior to this, Monot had also moderated a large number of events and panel discussions at the Zurich Film Festival. He has also, on several occasions, hosted the Night of the Nominees during which the nominees of the Swiss film prize Quartz are announced each year at the Solothurn Film Festival.
Commitments
Monot is the deputy CEO of the Bundesverband Schauspiel (Federal Association of Acting, BFFS) and is responsible for marketing. He is also a member of the German Film Academy as well as the European Film Academy.
Since 2012, Monot has, together with Heinz Badewitz, hosted the Berlinale section LOLA@Berlinale, which has managed the International Film Festival Berlin, the German Film Academy and German Films since 2010. The programme of this series consists of films that were preselected by the commissions of the German Film Academy (feature film, documentary film and children’s film) to be nominated for the German Film Awards.
Personal life
Monot lives with the journalist and HSE24 host Stefanie Sick and her three daughters in Munich. They were friends for 17 years prior to their relationship, and first met during shooting for the ARD sitcom Biggi in May 1998.
Monot’s first book Vertrauen Sie mir, ich tu's ja auch!, which he wrote together with David Denk, was published in 2015.
Filmography
Cinema (selection)
1994: Jazz
1999: The Devil and Ms. D
1999: Absolute Giganten
2001: Das Experiment
2001: Lammbock
2002: More Ants in the Pants
2003: Eierdiebe (The Family Jewels in the U.S.)
2004: The Trixxer
2005: A Quiet Love
2006: Heavyweights
2007: Bis zum Ellenbogen
2009: Eden Is West
2009: Men in the City
2009: Stationspiraten
2010: Slowplay
2010: Henri 4
2010: The Day of the Cat
2011: Resturlaub
2011: Almanya: Welcome to Germany
2011: What a Man
2011: Vicky and the Treasure of the Gods
2012: Guardians
2013: Kaiserschmarrn
2014: Who Am I
2014: The Circle
2014: Lola auf der Erbse
Television (selection)
1995: Tatort: "Rückfällig"
2000: Wolfsheim
2000: Hat er Arbeit?
2002: Die Rosenheim-Cops: "Im Auftrag seiner Majestät"
2002: Alles getürkt!
2004: The School Trip
2008: Tatort: "Der tote Chinese"
2008: Brüderchen und Schwesterchen
2009: Polizeiruf 110: "Die Lücke, die der Teufel lässt"
2010: Tatort: "Absturz"
2011: Rookie – Fast platt
2011: Hindenburg
2011: Tatort: "Das Dorf"
2012: Stolberg: "Trance"
2013: Tatort: "Puppenspieler"
2013: Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei: "Katerstimmung"
2013: Tatort: "Er wird töten"
2013: Die Chefin – Versprochen
2014: Das Glück der Anderen
since 2014: Ein Fall für zwei
2014: Jetzt ist Sense – Der Tod gehört zum Leben einfach dazu
2014: Alles ist Liebe
As a producer
2000: Timing (short film)
2009: Traum im Herbst
2010: Wo es weh tut
2011: Scissors & Glue: The Miami Project
2013: Kaiserschmarrn
2017: Knallerkerle
As a director
2017: Knallerkerle