
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. He studied at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München and graduated there in March 2018 with a diploma in documentary film directing and television journalism. Internationally, Kranz was seen in the drama The White Ribbon (2009) by Michael Haneke, in Quentin Tarantino's war film Inglourious Basterds and in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies. He became known to a wider television audience with the series Hindafing, in which he plays the city priest Kraus. The series was awarded the Austrian film prize Romy in 2018. His spot myBorder's joyFence was awarded the First Steps Award and the Porsche Award in 2018.

Scene of the Crime
TV • 1970

Bettys Diagnose
TV • 2015

Die Bergretter
TV • 2009

Inglourious Basterds
MOVIE • 2009

Kommissarin Lucas
TV • 2003

München 7
TV • 2004

Murder by the Lake
TV • 2014

The Signal
TV • 2024

War Horse
MOVIE • 2011

Oktoberfest: Beer and Blood
TV • 2020

Die Augenzeugen
TV • 2024

The Fifth Estate
MOVIE • 2013

Nanga Parbat
MOVIE • 2010

Heidi
MOVIE • 2015

Hammer & Sichl
TV • 2013

The White Ribbon
MOVIE • 2009

Hindafing
TV • 2017

13 Minutes
MOVIE • 2015