As his acting role model, Joachim Król names the twenty years older Briton Sir Anthony Hopkins. This may be surprising in terms of type, as there is hardly any similarity between the aristocratic gentleman and the son of a coal miner born in 1957 in Herne with Polish ancestry. Methodically, one gets closer to the matter: The inconspicuous and reserved nature of the portrayal, the reduction to few gestures, sparse facial expressions, and the intention to express a character through the slightest movements of the face create the connection.
Król appears clever or even cunning, his gaze can turn inward, his smile seems contemplative. The melancholy of world understanding surrounds him. In a certain way, Król is the further development of Rühmann’s emotional state. The fact that in 1996 he took on the role of the retired commissioner in Nico Hofmann's new film adaptation of Dürrenmatt's work "It Happened in Broad Daylight" may be considered evidence of this closeness.
Król's biography could come from a Sönke-Wortmann film, mixed from "Little Sharks" and "The Miracle of Bern": childhood in the Ruhr area, fun on the soccer field, alongside studying theater studies in Cologne, running a pub in Dortmund, followed by training as an actor at the Munich Falckenberg School. After stage stops in Moers, Bochum, Hanover, and Basel, Król focuses on work for film and television. For ZDF, he investigated for a few years as "Lutter" in Essen and brought with him the best regional characteristics: reliability, strong will, heart, and a sense for the real. As Frankfurt "Tatort" commissioner Frank Steier, he crossed his own pain threshold.
The two-time German Film Award winner Król has comedic talent – that made him popular. In 1994, alongside Til Schweiger, Katja Riemann, and Armin Rohde in Wortmann's Ralf-König comic adaptation "The Moving Man," he made the nation laugh as a naive gay man, among other things with the gag "Naked Stranger in the Closet." However, coarse humor remains rather foreign to his acting and nature. Joachim Król is normal, but not boring, is not down-to-earth, but buttoned-up. That such different directing temperaments as Helmut Dietl ("Rossini"), Doris Dörrie, Detlev Buck, and Tom Tykwer ("The Deadly Maria"; "Run Lola Run," "The Warrior and the Empress") appreciate him also shows how much this – by no means pale – character color is otherwise missing in German cinema.
Król, who lives with his family in Cologne, prepares meticulously for his roles, physically and mentally – one can see it in him. He can be quirky, but he can also be different. As proof, in 2004 he played the contract killer Victor in the internationally acclaimed thriller "Silent" with a physical presence, meditative calm, and underlying cool determination that was not expected. Likewise, in 2020 in Burhan Qurbani's new adaptation of "Berlin Alexanderplatz," in which he portrayed the sinister, quietly dangerous Pums.
