The bad thing about these often wonderful athletic careers is that they come to an end at some point. Finding the right time to jump into the rest of life is more difficult for some than all the sporting challenges before. In the case of Heiko Schaffartzik, on the other hand, things were clear pretty quickly. When he had to think about his tax return again and again during training, he knew: Okay, that was it then.
That was in spring 2020. The 115-time national player and two-time German champion was already 36 years old, his contract with Bundesliga club Hamburg Towers expired in May, and then the lockdown came in mid-March: no more games, no training , Nothing. Except a lot of time to think.
Schaffartzik says: “I finally had time to think about it and asked myself: What else could I do?” He came up with a rather original answer: be an actor.
Anyone who meets Heiko Schaffartzik on the street does not look at the former professional basketball player. He’s not one of those two-meter-long giant babies, but measures a very standard 1.83 meters. Born in Berlin, who played for FC Bayern from 2013 to 2015 and settled in Harlaching after his career, was a so-called development player on the field. Someone who is as nimble as he is cleverly distributing the balls, announcing moves, playing the opponent’s long boys in a dizzy way, pulling between them to the basket or reliably hitting from a distance.
Heiko Schaffartzik was a development player on the field. One who distributes the balls as swiftly as cleverly.
(Photo: Uwe Anspach / dpa)
Schaffartzik was damn good at all of this: for years he played in the national team, also with super star Dirk Nowitzki, was German champion with Alba Berlin and Bayern, and twice German cup winners (with Alba). But his greatest success came with the Parisian top club Nanterre 92: As team captain, he led his team to win the FIBA Europe Cup in 2017. The move to the Spanish first division club Saragossa, which had already been believed to be safe, failed because Schaffartzik injured his knee: he slipped in a puddle. The first injury in his career – and somehow the beginning of the end.
Because last spring he noticed: this is no longer what I really want to do. “If you want to be really good as a competitive athlete, you have to have blinkers,” explains Schaffartzik, “there is the goal up front, and everything I do has to be geared towards it. That way, you will lose a lot in life.”
He didn’t live like a choirboy, always had interests outside of basketball, taught himself the piano and guitar – and when he was playing in Berlin, he actually took part in a poetry slam in Friedrichshain. “I once saw a poetry slam night at WDR, when a dude said: ‘Because I’m a pacifist, I don’t wear bell-bottoms.’ And I thought to myself: ‘I want to do something like that too! ” Under a false name – Schaffartzik called himself Rosetto Martini – he read what he calls a seriously funny text and came third.
Back then it was just fun, a balance to everyday basketball life. “I thought that would also help me for sport. But at some point it was clear: I have to do something different.”
First success: Persil hired him for a commercial as a man with a laundry basket
He had thrown on the basket for the first time when he was three. In San Diego, where the family lived for two years, Little Heiko had already played in a team for seven-year-olds when he was four. 30 years of basketball: that has to be enough, right? Even though the thought of what could happen after his active career always led him to the obvious: “It was actually clear to me: I would be a coach. Like so many ex-professionals. Even as a player, I had many because of my position as a development player Took over coaching duties. I had good and not so good coaches, and sometimes I thought: I could do that much better! “
But it didn’t work out with the coach Schaffartzik.
Because there was this acting idea haunted in his head. “I’ve always been interested in that,” he says, “I love films. Even as a child I imitated people. There are videos where I try Michael Jackson’s moonwalk when I was four.” After his time in the USA, he often went to the cinema, on Mondays always to the sneak preview in “The Crank” in Charlottenburg, one of the few English-language cinemas.
One of Schaffartzik’s early heroes was “Forrest Gump”, when I was ten or eleven: “I must have seen it 50 times. It touched and inspired me, I thought it was great on many levels. But I only got it later Tom Hanks made what he became a completely different person. Fascinating! “
Even before he started thinking about the steering wheel in training, Schaffartzik had joined an improv theater group in Hamburg, just like that – researched on the Internet, went there, played along. Like on the field: take matters into your own hands.
When the end of his career was looming in Lockdown One, Schaffartzik thought: Okay, now I’ll take off: from playmaker to actor. What can you do about acting? He found: workshops, seminars, private coaches. He tried everything out right away, wanted to collect material so that he could introduce himself somewhere.
A year ago, after an e-casting for a commercial, Persil bought him as a man with a laundry basket. The beginning of an acting career? Who knows. In any case, the novice has “tasted blood”, as he says: “I train practically non-stop, commute between Berlin and Munich, and now I have enough self-confidence in my abilities as an actor that I can say: Okay, I’m ready!”
The only thing missing is someone who wants him. Schaffartzik knows: “You just have to meet someone who is convinced of you, who says: ‘That’s exactly how I imagine it!'”
He got to know more and more people, but was not the best networker and found it difficult to run after people: “Somebody just has to feel like you.”
At the film festival he gave himself the full program: dozens of films, panel discussions, often early in the morning too: “That was really nice,” he enthuses, “strong films, connections with people from the industry. I know a lot about filmmaking processes and experienced in acting. It was a really good week! “
As a typical competitive athlete, he has set his goal high right away: the leading role in a film or series. “There are types of roles that I trust myself to be: the hero role, not like Mel Gibson in ‘Braveheart’, but one with rough edges, also a loner. Or the antagonist with whom one fevered. The bad guys, but which one understands: I have always found them very likeable. “
He also likes scenes “that get to your kidneys, trigger something in you,” he says. “I’m a perfectionist in my own way, especially when it comes to roles or scenes: You have the chance to act out your perfectionism, to really go in. What I still have to learn is to switch off, not to take the role home with you . I’m getting lost in there – which I didn’t have in basketball in the end. “
The basketball. The playoffs have only just ended, between two of his ex-teams, Bayern and Berlin. He had dozens of interview requests on the table, almost all of which he rejected, and only watched a few of the final series. “I consciously moved away from basketball – because I want to do something new.”
At home he doesn’t have a basketball hoop, not even a ball, he hasn’t played in a long time. “Whereby: not true at all,” he says. A few weeks ago he played on an open court, one on one, against a 14-year-old: “I gave him a clap. It didn’t go against him, but I hadn’t touched a ball for seven months, I had to take a look. what happens now. I assumed that I would throw it over first, but nope: wrist was loose. “
It would have to go with the devil if there is no villain or hero role left for someone like that. Heiko Schaffartzik sees it this way: “I believe that everything will come as it should.”