Photography by Boris Kralj.
Pütter’s preparations start with the costumes. “It’s important,” he emphasises, highlighting the significance of clothing for his character development.
Trytsan Wyn Pütter, born in 1980, established himself as one of the most versatile actors of his generation – like a chameleon, he embodies the traumatised soldier or the shady pimp with equal conviction.
Pütter’s working method follows a precise ritual: “I try to read the script 150 times,” he explains of his process, “so that I know it extremely well.” However, this obsessive control is only the first phase of a process that paradoxically leads to letting go completely – “and for me, that’s almost the hardest moment, when you no longer think but, instead, like in a moment of free fall, you see what comes.” This builds the foundation of Pütter’s acting philosophy as he describes a state in which conscious control gives way to the ’inner voice’ becoming the ’voice of the character.’ “That’s really something that, for me, makes up the magic of acting – when ideas come to you that you wouldn’t have had yourself, but the character would definitely have.”
This form of immersion carries the risk of failing to detach from the assumed role. This makes it all the more important to maintain balance: “I still see it as a profession, and I can separate the two. Who is the character and who am I?” Pütter’s affinity for complex, often disturbing characters is remarkable. “The more difficult, the better. I love descending into the abyss,” he says of his role choices. In the series Parfum, he played a pimp who was abused as a child – a character that pushed him to his psychological limits. “These are characters that are incredibly challenging. But that’s the reason why I became an actor.” Pütter looks for the scars of life in every character: “I always try to play the characters from a place of hurt – how people act from their trauma. So how do I hide what I’m really feeling?”
Photography by Boris Kralj.
In his latest film, Raging Moms by Sonja Heiss, shows Pütter in an unusual constellation: alongside his partner, they play a married couple in crisis. “The personal and the professional became so intertwined,” he reflects on this experience. The parallels to real life made it “extremely difficult” not to take it home with him. This fusion of fiction and reality illustrates the intensity of Pütter’s working method – a risky game with his own identity in service of the art of acting.
Pütter experienced his most radical form of immersion in theatre, especially in Frank Castorf’s productions, the former artistic director of the Volksbühne Berlin: “Which, in principle, always cause some sort of total exhaustion, so that what takes place is no longer a play in the conventional sense, but something transcendent.” This ’total exhaustion’ is not collateral damage but method. It leads to a state in which conscious control breaks down and “something else takes over.” Pütter seeks out these ’extreme work experiences’ – for him, they are the place of true artistic transcendence.
Pütter’s preparations start with the costumes. “It’s important,” he emphasises, highlighting the significance of clothing for his character development. Together with costume designers, he creates mood boards and discusses details such as the perfectly fitting pocket square. This attention to seemingly mundane details reveals the perfectionist in him. Every detail becomes a building block of the illusion, every object a trigger for transformation. When he talks about his Montblanc pen, which he uses to jot down first script ideas, it becomes clear how important the haptic dimension of creativity is to him: “I sometimes feel the pen is writing the letter or script with me, so to speak.”
Pütter becomes particularly emotional when he talks about the birth of his daughter – the one moment he wants to hold on to forever. “That’s the moment you write down; the moment I wrote down, and just like in a film, it remains with me.” Here, life and art merge on another level: reality becomes cinema, and the most significant moment becomes an unforgettable scene.
In an age when authenticity often becomes a brand, Pütter embodies the opposite: the conscious uncertainty of one’s own identity in favour of foreign truths. His art is radical and risky – which is precisely why it is so fascinating. “The more complex and the greater the challenge, the more I enjoy it,” he says. It is this desire for the unknown, for the loss of control, that makes him one of the most interesting actors of his generation. At the end of our conversation, Trystan Pütter talks about his dream of travelling through India by train, like in Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited – “with two absurd friends, a great collection of travel bags, and a light green suit.” It’s an image that suits him perfectly: the eternal traveller between identities, always ready for the next transformation, the next immersion in a foreign world.
CREDITS
Concept: Antonia Dipner @antoniadipner
Creative Production: @cheers_studio_ber @johannaerdl
Styling: @thismustbtheplaceeee
Set Design: @kathleenalisch
Hair & Make-Up: @annika_jeck
Photography Assistant: @robertslifeproblems
Styling Assistant: @manoloblunt