Jörg Schneider, Swiss actor and comedian, died at 80

  Dead Famous

Dead. Jörg Schneider, conceive February 7, 1935 and died August 22, 2015 of cancer, he was a Swiss stage and film actor starring usually in Swiss German language cinema and television and stage productions.

Schneider also gained great notoriety in the German speaking area by numerous Kasperle, Pumuckl and fairytale-radio plays records and adapted plays for the Swiss German language.

Born in Zürich, canton of Zürich, in Switzerland, Jörg Schneider lived in the municipality of Wetzikon. For three years he attended the teacher training college, before he completed a commercial apprenticeship.

At the age of 20, Jörg Schneider premierred at the Hirschen (in fact a restaurant) theater in Zürich as co-founder of the Cabaret Äxgüsi, and on occasion of the Saffatheater in the cabaret comedy Lysistrata in 1958.

Schneider started acting in the 1960s, getting popular in comedian-related rules, later also in radio plays and as stage actor and comedian, and was one of the most prominent Swiss German actors and comedians.

Jörg Schneider was married to Romy Schneider for 52 years; their son died in 2010 at the age of 46.

For his lifetime work, Jörg Schneider was awarded with the Prix Walo 2013 in May 2014.

Yet end of January 2015, Schneider participated in Solothurn Film Festival at the premiere of his latest movie Usfahrt Oerlike, while for the shooting in May 2014 Schneider did not know that he was suffering from liver cancer.

Jörg Schneider was one of the most popular actors of the German-speaking Swiss entertainment scene in comedy and boulevard theater, where he had up to 300 performances a year.

He was considered a comedian with contagious enthusiasm. Beside the stage, Jörg Schneider also gained great notoriety in the German speaking area by his Kasperle, Pumuckl and fairytale-radio plays records.

Schneider also directed and translated serious and tabloid pieces in dialect versions and wrote children’s musicals. For Heidi, in 2002 he was awarded with the “fairy-tale-Oscar” S’Goldig Chrönli.

Jörg Schneider premierred in 1960 in Wenn d’Fraue wähle, a Swiss German comedy.

His propabably best known television roles are the chef Koni Frei in the Swiss television series Motel and as Oskar Wehrli from 2004 to 2006 in Lüthi und Blanc, but he also appeared in the popular Swiss television comedy Fascht e Familie in two episodes.

In their last movie, the 2015 comedy Usfahrt Oerlike about a man who decided to commit suicide, Jörg Schneider starred alongside Mathias Gnädinger who died in April 2015.

Swiss actor and comedian Jörg Schneider died on August 22, 2015 of cancer at age 80.