Louis Hofmann

Louis Hofmann is a German actor born on 3 June 1997. He initially gained attention for playing the lead role in the 2011 feature film Tom Sawyer. He later achieved wider acclaim and international prominence through his performances as a teenage German prisoner of war in the 2015 Danish film Land of Mine and as Jonas Kahnwald in the Netflix science fiction series Dark, which ran from 2017 to 2020.

Hofmann was born in the Bensberg district of Bergisch Gladbach and was raised in Cologne, Germany. His initial experience in front of the camera occurred on the WDR Fernsehen evening magazine programme Servicezeit, where he participated in a section called Die Ausflieger that tested family recreational activities. Following two and a half years with Servicezeit, he decided to pursue an acting career and applied to an agency, subsequently gaining representation with Agentur Schwarz.

His early television career included several guest roles. In 2009, Hofmann appeared in the legal comedy-drama Danni Lowinski and the series The Lost Father, as well as the television film Tod in Istanbul. The following year, in 2010, he performed in episodes of the television series Wilsberg and Alarm for Cobra 11.

Hofmann's first cinematic leading role came when he was cast as the titular character in director Hermine Huntgeburth's 2011 film adaptation Tom Sawyer. For the soundtrack, he joined co-star Leon Seidel to sing the track "Barfuß Gehen". He reprised his role in the sequel, The Adventures of Huck Finn, which was released in German cinemas on 20 December 2012. In 2013, he guest-starred in an episode of Stolberg and appeared in the comedy The Almost Perfect Man starting in October of that year.

In 2015, Hofmann starred as Wolfgang in Marc Brummund's film Sanctuary. This performance earned him the 2015 Bavarian Film Prize for Best Newcomer Actor and the 2016 German Actors Award in the newcomer category. His international debut as a German prisoner of war in the Danish-German co-production Land of Mine won him the Best Supporting Actor award at Denmark's Bodil Awards in 2016. He was also presented with the Special Prize Jaeger-LeCoultre Homage to German Cinema at the 2016 German Film Awards.

Hofmann continued his film work in 2016 by starring as Phil in Jakob M. Erwa's romantic drama Center of My World, based on the novel by Andreas Steinhöfel. His work led to a European Shooting Stars Award at the 2017 Berlinale. In 2016, he was cast in the lead role of Jonas Kahnwald in Dark, which debuted on Netflix on 1 December 2017. The series released its second season on 21 June 2019 and its third and final season on 27 June 2020.

In 2022, Hofmann was cast as Werner Pfennig in the Netflix series adaptation All The Light We Cannot See, which was released on 2 November 2023. In March 2023, he joined the cast of the Apple TV+ production Monstrous Beauty. He also appeared in the Apple TV+ series Masters of the Air, produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, which premiered on 26 January 2024.