Ilja Richter (born 24 November 1952 in East Berlin) is a German actor, voice actor, television presenter, singer, theatre director and author.
Ilja Richter was born to parents Georg and Eva Richter. Georg was a Communist, who named Ilja after the Russian journalist Ilya Ehrenburg, and Eva was a Jew who survived the Third Reich under a fake Aryan identity. Georg spent nine and a half years in concentration camps during the Third Reich.
After the family was in political difficulties in East Germany, they moved to West Berlin in 1953. There, the Richters leased a restaurant. In 1955, Ilja's sister Janina was born, and in 1959 they moved to Cologne. There, too, the Richters ran a restaurant, but moved back in 1960 to West Berlin, where they opened a guesthouse.
Eva, a former actress, brought Ilja to the Sender Freies Berlin (Radio Free Berlin) for an audition. Ilja's acting career began at the age of nine. As a teenager he starred in the series Till, the Boy Next Door as Albert. In the 1970s, Richter became famous in West-Germany as television presenter of Disco, a music show filmed before a young live audience in which he also performed in sketches.
As an actor, he played several roles in films and in theatre. He starred in several comedy movies alongside Rudi Carrell. As a voice actor, his most prominent role was lending his colourful, peppy voice to Timon from The Lion King. He also provided the German voices of Mike Wazowski in Monsters, Inc., Spot/Scott in Teacher's Pet (TV series), the title character of Count Duckula and Dave in The Penguins of Madagascar. One of his records is a German adaptation of Tiny Tim's Tiptoe Through the Tulips.
Richter wrote several books. He dated the singer Marianne Rosenberg from 1975 to 1978. From 1995 to 1997 he was married to singer Stephanie von Falkenhausen. He lives in Berlin with his longtime companion Barbara Ferun, and has one child, Kolja.
