Harald Schmidt

H. Schmidt also voiced an audiobook Jerry Cotton – Mein erster Fall beim FBI (2003).

H. Schmidt has won more than 30 TV, comedy and theatrical awards, including three German Television Awards, the viewers choice award Bambi, the Grimme Award, the Golden Camera and the RTL Golden Lion as best talk show host. In 2013 he became a Cavalier of Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur.

On 15 September 2011 Schmidt returned to his former network Sat.1 picking up its former name of Die Harald Schmidt Show again. However, Sat.1 cancelled the show after one season due to low ratings. Starting 4 September 2012, new episodes were shown on Sky Hits HD and Sky Atlantic HD, two channels of the German Pay-TV network Sky Deutschland. Schmidt hosted his very last show on 13 March 2014. He announced he would not return to TV. SKY published the last show on YouTube.

Late in 2007, Manuel Andrack was replaced by comedian Oliver Pocher, who had a more active part than his predecessor, and some other elements changed as well. The broadcast's title was changed to Schmidt & Pocher, trying to attract a younger audience. Oliver Pocher was less educated and "less intellectual", a fact that caused some criticism among Harald Schmidt's core audience and broadsheet newspaper comments in Germany.

In October 2005, his daughter Amelie was born. Harald Schmidt resides in Cologne with his partner Ellen Hantsch, a school teacher, and five children, the eldest being from a former relationship. Little is known about the children and their two mothers as Schmidt shields them from the public. In interviews he hardly talks about them.

On his first show after the break Schmidt appeared with long hair and a full beard, making fun of his long absence from the public. After summer break in 2005 the "celebrity guest" segment was reintroduced.

He engaged in long, seemingly boring conversations with his "supervising producer" Manuel Andrack (known as "chief dramatic adviser"), who sat at a desk next to Schmidt's until 2005, and, like Letterman, also included his staff in the show, for instance, his cue card girl Suzana Novinscak and his band leader Helmut Zerlett. Schmidt celebrated the return of French woman Nathalie Licard in his ARD era (like Zerlett she is still part of Schmidt's team). In Schmidt's original Harald Schmidt Show (1995–2003), Licard was involved in the goings-on in front of the audience too.

In 2004, Schmidt toured through Germany with a live comedy show, featuring his former late night show sidekick Manuel Andrack. Schmidt is best known for his late-night shows:

In 2004 Schmidt began a second run with a new show named Harald Schmidt on publicly funded ARD, where he had begun his television career 16 years earlier. The show no longer featured "celebrity" interviews but dealt even more with the discussion of current events in a rather freely associative manner. Manuel Andrack returned as his sidekick.

In 1995 Schmidt changed from the publicly funded TV station ARD to the privately owned German television network Sat.1 in order to host a late night show comparable to Late Night with Conan O'Brien or Late Show with David Letterman. The show, named Die Harald Schmidt Show, features stand-up comedy as well as famous national and international guests. From 30 June 2003 the show was broadcast five days a week, including Monday evening. On 8 December 2003 Schmidt suddenly announced the end of the show, following a change of management of Sat.1. The last show was aired on 23 December 2003. The following suspension of the TV format lasted until 2011, when the show returned to Sat.1.

In the later years of its first run on Sat.1 (circa 2001-2003), the Harald Schmidt Show became a critics' favourite due to Schmidt's "intellectual" sense of humour, especially for incorporating many references to high culture (be it literature, theater, classical music, painting, or cinema), history, and philosophy. Another recurring item were forays into surrealism and absurdity that were pretty much anathema to commercial or "mainstream" interest: For example, Schmidt hosted one show completely in French (re-broadcast a few days later on Franco-German channel Arte, this Show en Francais episode gained glowing reviews from French critics). On another occasion, the screen was blacked for half of the show making it into a "radio broadcast". Another time, he disproved a critic who had written that it is impossible to spend several minutes on TV just cracking nuts without anybody saying anything. The show's reviews and renown among critics gradually worsened during the years of its ARD run (2004-2010), especially because Schmidt's choice of Oliver Pocher as a new sidekick was considered a mistake that diminished the entire show's quality.

1994-2013 H. Schmidt worked as a columnist for one of the major German weekly news magazines, Focus. Many of his articles were assembled and released as books. The first of these, Warum? ("Why?"), was published in 1997; another 9 books followed.

H. Schmidt's first book, Tränen im Aquarium, was published in 1993, the second, Mulatten in gelben Sesseln, in 2005.

Before long, TV noticed the talented young comedian and in 1988 Schmidt began to host his first TV show, MAZ ab. This was followed by shows like Psst! and Schmidteinander, but the biggest boost to his career occurred in 1992, when he started hosting the popular Saturday night show, Verstehen Sie Spaß? (a variation of Candid Camera). Schmidt was awarded Germany's most important TV award, "Adolf-Grimme-Preis", which would be followed by many others. Just one year later, he was honoured as the "Entertainer of the year" and awarded the famous Bambi award and the Golden Camera.

At the age of 21, Schmidt went to Stuttgart to attend drama school for three years. After that, he gained on-stage experience at Städtische Bühne (Municipal Stage) in Augsburg. His first role was that of the 2nd Mamaluke in Lessing's Nathan the Wise. In 1984, Harald Schmidt became a lyricist for the cabaret Kom(m)ödchen in Düsseldorf and in 1986, was honoured as "Best Newcomer cabaret artist" and toured through Germany with his own show.

Harald Franz Schmidt (born 18 August 1957) is a German actor, writer, columnist, comedian and television entertainer best known as host of two popular German late-night shows.

As son of refugees who fled from Sudetenland (now Czech Republic) in 1945, Schmidt spent his youth in Swabian Nürtingen, where he went to grammar school. Due to his strict Catholic upbringing he devoted time to the Roman Catholic church, serving as choirmaster and playing the organ.