When he first glanced at the script for a new adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Daniel Brühl was immediately hooked. “When I was growing up, this was one of the most important books we read. I think almost all of us read it at school and it so impressed us. When I was older I felt I had to read it again.” So, almost 100 years after it was published, being able to adapt it cinematically in its original language for the first time was something Brühl was “immediately intrigued by”.
The German-Spanish actor is best known for his roles in Good Bye, Lenin! (2003), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Rush (2013), where he played the late Formula One great Niki Lauda. He says that after 25 years in the business – and now able to pick and choose what he does – it is not the size of a role but myriad other factors that draw him to a film. In All Quiet …, directed by Edward Berger, it was the “desire to tell this story out of a real moral interest”, says Brühl. He is one of its executive producers working alongside his friend, Malte Grunert, with whom he became a partner at the production company Amusement Park Film in 2015.
