Devid Striesow was born on the island of Rügen and grew up in Rostock. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he went back to school to complete his Abitur and then decided to become an actor after his civilian service. He was accepted at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin and after his studies he could be seen at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg and the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus, among others. In 2004, he was honored as the best up-and-coming actor by the magazine Theater heute.
Since 2000, he has appeared regularly on screen and on television. After his cinema debut in "Kalt ist der Abendhauch", he appeared in "Lichter", "Yella" and the Oscar-winning Austrian film "Die Fälscher", among others. For his role in "Die Fälscher" Devid Striesow received the German Film Award. From 2013 to 2019, he played the lead commissioner Jens Stellbrink in the "Tatort" from Saarbrücken. For his portrayal of Hape Kerkeling in "Ich bin dann mal weg" (2015), he was awarded the Bambi for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
His most recent work includes the Netflix film "All Quiet on the Western Front" (2022), which won numerous international awards, as well as his roles as Johann Sebastian Bach in "Bach – Ein Weihnachtswunder" (2024), Hermann Göring in "Babylon Berlin", Richard Meyerhoff in "Ach, diese Lücke, diese entsetzliche Lücke" and Johannes R. Becher in "Vaterland" (all 2026).
Devid Striesow has already narrated numerous audiobooks and performs in (musical) readings, such as Günther Grass's "Die Blechtrommel" (The Tin Drum) with percussion accompaniment by Stefan Weinzierl. He is generally very enthusiastic about music and plays the guitar, piano, and violin. Since 2018, with only one brief break, he has been part of the Deutschlandfunk Kultur podcast "Klassik drastisch", in which he and his fellow actor Axel Ranisch, two self-confessed classical music nerds, give free rein to their passion for music.