He amazed eleven years ago as a contract boy in the movie of the same name. The Bernese actor is now in his thirties and has risen to become one of the most sought-after of his generation — not only in Switzerland.
“I screwed up a lot”: Max Hubacher in the film “Sachertorte”.
Many a talent that breaks through with vehemence at a young age fizzles out early. Max Hubacher, however, has lifted himself from this starting position into the local top league of the art of acting. At the same time, even in his thirtieth year, he retained something boyish. The hair curls like putti angels, the blue eyes look dreamy when he sits across from you: a Bernese «Giel», from whose mouth in the appropriate dialect quite pithy statements come.
Hubacher was really still a boy when he first stepped onto the big stage in Robert Walser’s Liebestraum at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. “If I remember correctly, my grandma had read about a casting for young people in the newspaper,” he says during a conversation in Zurich. “I was going through a difficult phase, screwed up a lot, didn’t really know what to do, especially since I had just stopped playing football. I had to find something that gave me something.”
Fight against school fatigue
He had previously been able to gain some experience in a children’s theater in Bern, which he found stupid at first. The mother insisted that he at least try. His debut in the theater at the age of thirteen was “the greatest time of my life”, also because he was freed from unloved school lessons for two months.
That didn’t put an end to the tiredness of the lessons: “I was in the seventh grade and I still had three years of school ahead of me. That depressed me because I knew exactly what to expect.” He pulled it through after all, up to the Matura – this time, too, his parents had insisted. At that time he was already the winner of the Swiss Film Prize, thanks to the title role in “Der Verdingbub” (2011). The year before, he had appeared as a cancer patient in “Station Pirates” and was discovered by Corinna Glaus: the formative casting woman in Swiss film became important for his career and as a person to relate to.
Max Hubacher looks good, no doubt, but not so outrageously good that he risks being reduced to appearances. He is currently shooting in Ticino (“I can’t say what exactly”), where we last met in 2020: in a huge forest clearing in Ticino’s Maggia Valley, he stood in front of the camera for the feature film “Monte Verità”, he gave the historical figure of the psychoanalyst Otto Gross.
The costly work did not become the hoped-for milestone, neither for Swiss film history nor for Hubacher’s career – unlike his title role in “The Runner” (2018): thanks to him, the protocol of a botched life, inspired by a real case in Bern, became the other Life becomes fatal, an oppressive psychogram: First, with desperation turned inward, he wins the empathy of the audience for the character, only to disturb it all the more deeply as a serial offender.
The Early Crisis
Max Hubacher had acquired the tools for such higher tasks four years previously at the University of Music and Theater in Leipzig. Only after completing his studies did he, by his own account, dare to call himself an actor. As such, he is now part of a strong Swiss generation that is also successful in Germany and is represented by names such as Luna Wedler and Joel Basman. He has a lot in common with the latter – also a competition? ‘Funnily not. We’re never cast in the same roles.” He played with Luna Wedler in “Der runner” as well as in the Instagram project “@ichbinsophiescholl”, with which the SWR 2021 addressed the young audience. Since then, he, who otherwise describes himself as a “social media muffle”, has at least managed an Instagram account.
But what dangers does he see in having been so successful at such a young age? “There were times when I didn’t do well with it,” he admits, “namely when I was eighteen: With the ‘Verdingbuben’ I got fame for something that was based on very bad fates that happened to many. Many of those affected then contacted me and told me their life stories.» That often happens to him with film roles, but in this case he couldn’t reconcile his success with the terrible historical background: “So I didn’t like being recognized or even spoken to on the street, which is okay for me now.”
After “Runner”, Hubacher received similar role offers, which he immediately turned down, as he says: “I’m always looking for new challenges.” For this reason he also took on his most recent leading role in the more cheerful German-Austrian production “Sachertorte”, which premiered at the Zurich Film Festival in autumn: for a long time he was afraid of parts to which he had less distance, so he couldn’t hide behind them that well. “But then I knew that I really had to do it now.”
In this romantic comedy, he plays the lovable Karl, who is consumed with longing for a lost beloved: People like to wish for something far away and only realize later that true happiness is in front of their noses. The message is entertainingly packaged in a somewhat transparent plot, with borrowings from the classic «Before Sunrise».
Between Bern and Berlin
It’s a big leap from there to his next role: In “Krigsseileren”, the most expensive Norwegian film production to date, he plays the historical figure of the German submarine commander Reinhard Hardegen in World War II. “The director saw ‘Captain’, in which I play a German Nazi deserter, and wrote me a letter,” he explains. “He was very unsure whether I would do it, but I felt very honored and said yes immediately.” Isn’t he afraid of being fixed on the Nazi role like so many colleagues in German-speaking countries? “I almost believe that if you want to make international progress in Germany, you can’t say you’re not playing Nazi characters,” he replies calmly.
Today Max Hubacher lives in Berlin and in Bern, whose troubadour Mani Matter, who died fifty years ago, gave him strong childhood memories with his songs. He loves his hometown, says the 29-year-old actor, and he loves Switzerland, with whose filmmaking he remains connected despite all the successes in neighboring countries: “It’s so nice to work at home. There is a great deal of trust, and the productions are almost family-like.” Although the frame is of course no longer as protected as it was in the beginning.
“Sachertorte”, on Amazon Prime.