Since his father was the senior physician of a ward in the Bad Schussenried Centre for Psychiatry, he grew up with his three siblings in a service flat on the former hospital grounds. He attended the Studienkolleg St.Johann Blönried and graduated from there in 2003. At the age of 17, he lived for one year on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where he graduated from Red Cloud High School in 2001. In 2008 he completed his acting education at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich.