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 he
literally burst into movie fame as the flame-haired Lola
dashing through the streets of Berlin in the 1998 feature Run Lola Run (Lola rennt). But that frenetic, ground-breaking film by German director Tom Tykwer wasn't Potente's first.
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The German actress got her start in two 1995 German films, Aufbruch (Setting Off, a student-made film) and Nach fünf im Urwald (It's a Jungle Out There/After Five in the Jungle). Potente's initial training as an actress took place while she was in high school in Germany and briefly in an American high-school drama class in Houston (as an exchange student). From 1994 to 1996 she studied at Munich's Otto Falkenberg school of performing arts. While still in Munich, her 1995 performance as the 17-year-old Anna in Nach fünf im Urwald earned her the Bavarian film award for “Best Newcomer” when she was barely 21. One German reviewer wrote of the new actress: “Indeed one of the most exciting faces in German cinema. It radiates a vitality and innocence that takes your breath away.” She also received critical praise for her work in several subsequent German films. But it was her colorful punk look and energetic jogging and screaming in Lola rennt that really put her on the international cinematic map.
The small-town girl with a large screen-presence soon found herself being considered for big-budget Hollywood pictures. Her English-language Hollywood debut turned out to be the role of Barbara the stewardess/drug courier in Blow (2001). Unfortunately, Potente's airline stewardess character (Johnny Depp's/George Jung's main squeeze) dies off in the first half of the movie. But Potente also completed filming a new movie version of Robert Ludlum's action-thriller The Bourne Identity in Prague and Paris with Matt Damon in February 2001. (See our Potente Filmography for more about this 2002 release and Potente's other films.)
One of the few books
about Potente is in German.
More about this book (in English)
Born in the German city of Münster in 1974, Potente grew up in the small-town atmosphere of nearby Dülmen in the Münsterland region of North Rhine-Westphalia. During the 1991-92 school year, at the age of 17, she lived in Houston, Texas as a high school exchange student. Of her year in the US she says: “I did the whole thing. I had an American boyfriend, went to football games, tennis tournaments and to my American prom. I was so serious about my American boyfriend I brought him back to Germany with me to visit my parents. They were horrified.”
In the recent past, Potente has been linked romantically to director Tom Tykwer (sharing a Berlin abode for a time) and the actor Elijah Woods (briefly in Hollywood). But it's no surprise that both relationships ended, with a hectic filming schedule that often requires Potente to be on a movie set and to divide her time between Hollywood and her homeland. Her most recent work includes the German productions Blueprint and Anatomie 2, plus the international production The Tulse Luper Suitcases.
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