Life and Career
Lubitsch was born in Berlin, the son of Anna (née Lindenstaedt) and Simon Lubitsch (Russian: Любич), a tailor. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno and his mother from Wriezen-on-the-Oder, outside Berlin. He turned his back on his father's tailoring business to enter the theater, and by 1911, he was a member of Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater. He made his film debut the following year as an actor, but he gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing. He appeared in approximately thirty films as an actor between 1912 and 1920. His last film appearance as an actor was in the 1920 drama Sumurun, opposite Pola Negri and Paul Wegener, in which he also directed.
Read more about this topic: Ernst Lubitsch
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