
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.

Inglourious Basterds
2009 · as Herrman #3

Heidi
2015 · as Mr. Kandidat

War Horse
2011 · as Junior German Officer

Time We Lost
2025 · as Lutz Schmauser

The Fifth Estate
2013 · as Otto

The White Ribbon
2009 · as The Tutor

Rommel
2012 · as Karl Daniel

13 Minutes
2015 · as Franz Xaver Lechner

Der Garmisch Krimi - Wolfsmord
2026 · as Patrick Wams

Nanga Parbat
2010 · as Hans Saler

Räuber Kneißl
2008 · as Gendarm Hildebrand

Fräulein Else
2014 · as Paul

The Goldfish
2019 · as Kursleiter

The Diary of Anne Frank
2016 · as Jan Hartog

Siblings
2016 · as Niels

King Laurin
2016 · as Bauer Hans

The Pursuit of Unhappiness
2012 · as Moritz

Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Painting
2025 · as Liebfried Cantor