Typically, people who want to combat their fear of flying seek out a therapist. Or they test breathing exercises and autogenic training. Not Tim Wilde. The actor takes the radical route to get his aviophobia under control – he gets a pilot’s license. He has just completed a long-haul flight lasting several hours with his flight instructor, including several landing approaches to various small airfields in Baden-Württemberg. Don’t struggle with adversity, just do it – that’s the busy actor’s motto. This attitude has accompanied the 58-year-old his entire life. She also introduced him to acting.
He still remembers well the visit to the theater in Berlin in 1993. A friend took him to the performance “The Robbers,” where Heino Ferch and Sebastian Koch were on stage. “There I was sitting in the front row, the ‘Pierre Littbarski’ guy, with a leather jacket and thought to myself, ‘I can do that too,’” he says with a broad grin. He was 27 years old at the time. The problem: There was an age limit of 24 at the drama school. He could have quarreled and mourned a missed opportunity. Instead, he said to himself: “Then I’ll be 24 again.” He completed his training at the F. Kirchhoff Vocational School for Drama in Berlin.
“There I was sitting in the front row, the ‘Pierre Littbarski’ guy, with a leather jacket and thought to myself, ‘I can do that too’.”
In order to get his fear of flying under control, the 58-year-old is currently getting a pilot’s license.
The actor has just completed a long-haul flight lasting several hours.
Tim Wilde was an early adopter of electromobility: he currently drives an Opel Astra Electric.
Three years later – the world wasn’t exactly waiting for a 30-year-old fresh out of drama school – the offers came slowly. Of all things, a commercial on the news channel N-TV in which Wilde played a broker brought the breakthrough. The inquiries piled up and in 1998 he made his film debut in Sönke Wortmann’s “Der Campus”. The following year he worked for the first time with Michael “Bully” Herbig in the film “Erkan and Stefan” (1999). “Then it really started.” Countless film and TV roles followed: Tatort, The Shoe of Manitu, and in 2008 he had his first leading role in the cinema in the crook comedy “Ossi’s Eleven”.
Deep connection with the Opel brand
In 2010, Tim Wilde took on another star role away from the film set – that of the Opel product tester. It is a partnership that continues to this day. The actor currently drives an Opel Astra Electric. He says about himself – his first car was an Opel Ascona – that he has “petrol in his blood”. But that didn’t stop him from relying on electromobility early on. In the summer of 2020 he will be making his first laps through Berlin in an Opel Corsa-e. “It’s crazy how this thing goes at the traffic lights, just step on the pedal – and whoosh, we’re in front. “Oh, I knew it, these electric things have something,” was his conclusion.
“Oh, I knew it, these electric things have something.”
For his role as Paul Schott in the successful format “WaPo Bodensee”, the Berliner by choice often ends up in Baden-Württemberg.
Authenticity and relatability are what have linked the actor to the Rüsselsheim-based car manufacturer for so long.
It is this authenticity and relatability that has connected the actor with the Rüsselsheim car manufacturer for so long. When Tim Wilde tested the Opel Mokka Electric in the summer of 2021, he praised the workmanship, the design and also this: “The Mokka is affordable for normal people.” Despite his decades of success, Tim Wilde has retained his style. A guy like you and me. It wasn’t something he was born to be in front of the camera with Hollywood star Nick Nolte in the film “Head Full of Honey”.
The long way from Stralsund
Born in Stralsund in the former GDR, he trained as a heating engineer after school. After a less successful time in the military – he wanted to become a naval diver – and a failed attempt to escape, he came to East Berlin in 1987 and got by with odd jobs. In the summer of 1989, after the Prague Spring, he traveled to the West, ended up in a reception camp in Gießen, and worked in a retirement home in Frankfurt/Main. “When I heard on the radio that the Wall had finally come down, I immediately set off for Berlin,” he says. There, where four years later a visit to the theater would give his life a new direction.
Just do it instead of arguing: With this attitude, the actor not only got his fear of flying under control.
Since 2017, Tim Wilde has regularly traveled from his adopted home of Berlin to Baden-Württemberg. Here he is in front of the camera as police officer Paul Schott in the ARD evening series “WaPo Bodensee”. It is an extremely successful format, the eighth season is currently running on Tuesdays at 6:50 p.m. And here in the south of the republic he also made the decision to face his fear of flying. As is his nature, with the greatest possible enthusiasm – in the cockpit of a small aircraft. Here too, the character performs more than impressively despite his initial phobia. “I made a decent landing,” he says happily. A sentence that is true in every respect.
April 2024
Photos: Opel/Chr. Bittman