RIP Ulrich Mühe

I didn't expect that at all! I read on IMDb that German actor Ulrich Mühe has died. For my knowledge, the only performance of his I have seen was his amazing turn in this year's (deserving) Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film The Lives of Others (for which he will surely be in the running for an UMA Award no doubt). He was only 54 and passed due to stomach cancer.

From CNN

He was a veteran of German theatre and had roles in more than thirty domestic and foreign films, but will be remembered internationally for playing Gerd Wiesler, the bald Stasi officer in the film that won a best foreign language Oscar in February

...

Muehe earned best actor at the German Film Prize and European Film Awards for the role in "Das Leben der Anderen", a German box-office hit directed by Florian Heckel von Donnersmarck.

It has been nearly 18 years since the Berlin Wall fell, but the film was credited as being the first to offer both an honest and compelling depiction of Stasi oppression.

"It took a few years before anyone found a clever way to bring into focus a system that kept 17 million people locked up and under suppression," Muehe told Reuters after collecting his best actor "Lola" last year in Berlin.

You know how people show up in the In Memorium packages at awards shows and you're all "Oh my god! I didn't know!" well, now I will know, but it will still be a jarring shock. As I said, I barely even knew him or his work, but it just makes you sit up and go "Whoa". Ja has some more words about Mühe at MNPP.