Willy Wonka’s original Augustus Gloop unrecognisable with unexpected new career

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory star Michael Böllner portrayed Augustus Gloop in the original film – but now claims no one knows who he is.

In the 1971 favorite starring Gene Wilder, Böllner was one of five children invited to the chocolatier’s fantastical factory.

He suffered a darkly memorable fate when he falls into Wonka’s chocolate river and gets sucked up the pipes, but the young German actor, now 62, didn’t pursue a career in showbiz.

Böllner now works as a tax lawyer and barely gets recognized as Wonka’s greedy first victim.

“The film is not famous in Germany. Nobody knew of the film until the version with Johnny Depp came out [in 2005],” he revealed on WGN news.

“So when I tell people I was a part of the Willy Wonka movie, nobody knows.”

Although the classic comedy has become a family staple, it didn’t make a huge splash at the box office.

Böllner claims Germany was largely unfamiliar with the story until Tim Burton’s remake with the Pirates of the Caribbean star in the iconic role.

“I just went down to make this movie, stayed there for a few weeks and I didn’t really know what was going on,” he recalled in another interview with This Morning.

“I thought, ‘This is just a movie and it will fade away very quickly’.”

However, the film has continued to stand the test of time and the former child star still meets up with the cast for conventions, even if most people in his native Germany don’t know who he is.

“It’s really fun. It’s a kind of strange, different world for me,” he added.

“I am usually doing taxes, but having fans and being famous in the UK and USA, it’s really great, fantastic.”

Although he enjoys his occasional time in the limelight, Böllner admitted he didn’t have much fun filming Gloop’s most famous scene.

Rather than falling into a delicious chocolate river, he said: “It was cold water old water, terrible stinking water.

“It had been there for weeks and it was very shallow, just 10cm deep.

“There was a small space of about a square metre where I had to jump in, it was dangerous because the water was not clear.”