Hape Kerkeling maintained a leading position among Germany's most beloved comedians and actors across more than twenty years. Born Hans Peter Kerkeling in Recklinghausen on December 9, 1964, he performed with the band Gesundfutter throughout his teenage years before turning to comedy and attracting notice through radio work on WDR and BR. His 1984 casting in the sketch series Känguru brought sudden prominence once he played the grating child Hannilein, quickly becoming the program's standout figure. A period on Radio Bremen's Extratour preceded his own series Total Normal, a pointed satire of media practices. The program collected the Goldene Kamera, the Adolf-Grimme-Preis, and the Bayerischer Fernsehpreis while its theme "Das Ganze Leben Ist ein Quiz" reached the German charts. Late 1991 brought intense media attention after filmmaker and gay rights activist Rosa von Praunheim publicly disclosed Kerkeling's sexuality. The controversy scarcely affected the strong box-office performance of his 1992 debut feature Kein Pardon, which he also wrote and directed. Subsequent series Cheese became his first critical and commercial disappointment, leading him promptly to Warmumsherz and a series of telefilms headlined by Club Las Piranjas, Willi und die Windzors, and Die Oma Ist Tot. In 1999 he began hosting the hit program Darüber Lacht die Welt and received the Deutscher Fernsehpreis for Best Entertainment Presenter in 2003. The 2004 theatrical release Samba in Mettmann was followed by the interactive specials Großer Deutschlandtest and Großer Deutsch-Test. During 2006 Kerkeling hosted the German version of Dancing with the Stars under the title Let's Dance and issued the bestseller Ich Bin Dann Mal Weg, a record of his pilgrimage on foot to Santiago de Compostela.
