Karl Dominik

Karl Dominik, Chinese name: Kaier (凯洱, pinyin: Kǎiěr, lit. "Triumphant River") is a Western Chinese speaking actor based in China. Originally from Poland he studied acting in Canada in 1996, and started his acting career in China in 2006.

History

Born in Lodz, Poland Karl lived in a slew of places (in order): London, England, Burlington, Ontario, Canada, New York, USA, Toronto, Canada, Sydney, Australia, Tsukuba, Japan, Tokyo, Japan, Los Angeles, USA and finally Shanghai, China. During his first stay in Canada he also became a Canadian citizen.

He studied film and television acting at the Toronto Television Actors Academy, but after completing his course decided he needed to get a "real job" so he pursued his career in his next favorite area - Information Technology. Everything from computer hardware, programming, web pages, graphic design were all included. This eventually developed into doing Information Technology Consulting then to Business Consulting - including business process reengineering and business development.

He has this to say about living in Los Angeles and acting:

"When I lived in Los Angeles I never considered doing acting there as I considered it a "saturated market" from a business perspective. As a business consultant I would never never recommend a business to attempt break into a saturated market, at least not without some sort of niche, which is the environment in Los Angeles for acting. Furthermore, a great portion of my staff were also all aspiring actors!"

China

After coming to China, he continued his career in business development, which led to working in marketing, which further led to working in PR doing events. At this point he had had enough of the office life, and decided once again. So, throwing off the suit he set out to become an actor once again in his current home, Shanghai. Doing PR events, club parties, networking event became his new business him to attain many small parts in parts in both local productions as well as overseas productions filming in China. After a slew of low paying small parts, he attained a lead role in the American-Chinese jointly produced film "Milk and Fashion" (牛奶风尚, pinyin: Niú Nǎi Fēng Shàng) produced by China Venture Films. He has also played major roles in several Chinese television series.

Most Chinese people know him by his comedy series "Wangfujing adventures" in which he is spliced and green-screened into well known Chinese films and appears to interact with the characters in the movie.

Shanghai Actors Association

Upon making the decision to become an actor in China, Karl noticed the lack of any formal structure in the industry. To change this, he created an organization to help actors create a community and share information and knowledge, the Shanghai Actors Association. Also many other more focused interest groups were formed through this vessel, such as the East West Theater Company of Shanghai. With a member base of mostly foreigners, the SAA continued to be almost exclusively foreigners, but mostly only due to the fact that all of their events, material and website are in English, with little or no translation to Mandarin.

External links

• Karl Dominik official homepage
• Planetkarl blog
• Shanghai Actors Association
• Wangfujing adventures Episode 1

zh:凯洱