David Kross

David Kross is a German actor who works in both German and English-language film productions. He gained international recognition for playing the lead role of Michael Berg in the 2008 film adaptation The Reader. Over the course of his career, he has appeared in various feature films, including Tough Enough, Krabat, War Horse, Race, and Into the White.

Kross was born in Henstedt-Ulzburg, located 20 miles north of Hamburg, Germany. He grew up in Bargteheide, where he attended Eckhorst High School until 2007. In 2009, he enrolled in a three-year course at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art to improve his acting and English language skills. However, he dropped out at the end of that same year to concentrate on his film career.

His acting career began with a small role in the 2002 film Hilfe, ich bin ein Junge. In December 2003, he joined Blaues Wölkchen, a children's theatre group in Bargteheide, making his first major theatrical appearance in Hilfe, die Herdmanns kommen. His screen breakthrough came after director Detlev Buck's daughter recommended him in 2005. Following an audition, Buck cast Kross as the 15-year-old lead character in the film Tough Enough, which focused on a boy moving to Berlin's Neukölln area. His performance received praise at the 2006 Berlinale and earned him the Best Actor award at the 11th Filmfestival Türkei/Deutschland in Nuremberg.

Following his breakthrough, Kross collaborated with Buck again in the 2006 film Hands off Mississippi, playing an apprentice baker. In the fall of 2006, he began filming Marco Kreuzpaintner's Krabat, an adaptation of Otfried Preußler's children's book. Playing the title role alongside co-stars Daniel Brühl and Robert Stadlober, Kross portrayed an apprentice of magic. The film debuted at movie festivals in September 2007 and was released in theatres in October 2008.

In September 2007, Kross began shooting Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader in Berlin, Cologne, and Görlitz. Learning English for the role, Kross starred as Michael Berg opposite Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, and Bruno Ganz. The film premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York in December 2008 and was presented at the 2009 Berlinale. For his performance, Kross won the Sierra Award for Youth in Film from the Las Vegas Film Critics Society, the Chopard trophy at the 62nd Cannes Festival in May 2009, and received a nomination for a European Film Award for Best Actor.

In 2009, Kross starred in Same Same but Different, directed again by Buck and based on an autobiographical article by Benjamin Prüfer. In June 2010, he was cast in Steven Spielberg's film War Horse, which was filmed in Dartmoor, Devon, U.K., starting in August 2010 and released in December 2011. By 2011, Kross was residing in Berlin-Mitte and expressed a preference to remain based in Germany while continuing to act in both German and English-language films.