Clemens Schick

German actor Clemens Schick nearly abandoned his chosen profession of acting when he decided to take a sharp career detour into religion. That detour came after only a year of studying acting at Ulm's Academy of Performing Arts. Schick spent the following 22 months in a seminary before discovering that he wasn't called to serve God after all. He returned to learning his craft in a different locale, the Berlin School of Drama. Several years later, that training paid off when he started winning roles in German TV productions. He made a big step up the production ladder with an appearance as a German NCO participating in the siege of Stalingrad in the internationally-distributed World War II sniper drama "Enemy at the Gates" (2001), starring Jude Law and Rachel Weisz. After that experience, he went back to domestic TV and played in his first German movie, 2002's "Der Wald." In the middle of that decade, Schick got the plum opportunity to be a James Bond bad guy, playing shaven-headed Kratt (the henchman to lead bad guy Le Chiffre) in the franchise reboot "Casino Royale" (2006). His Bond character died, but Schick's career had plenty of life after the part; concentrating largely on German TV and film productions, he has worked steadily in subsequent years.