Résumé

Susanne Lothar comes from Hamburg, where she began studying at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in the early 1980s. In 1983, she received an award for her very first film performance. For her role in Eisenhans, directed by Tankred Dors, she was awarded the Bundesfilmpreis as “best leading actress”.

Despite her early success in the cinema, Susanne Lothar increasingly turned to stage acting, performing major roles in Hamburg, Cologne, Vienna, Zurich, Stuttgart, Salzburg and Berlin. In 1988, the theatre magazine Theater Heute nominated her Actress of the Year. Her varied career also includes five plays directed by Peter Zadek, of which Wedekind’s Lulu (1988 - 1992) and Sarah Kane's Gesäubert (1998) at the Hamburg Kammerspiele deserve mention here. Under Luc Bondy, she performed in the Burgtheater’s première of the successful French play Dreimal Leben (2000). At the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt she took the part of Blanche du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Burkhard Kosminski (2003/4).

In the early 1990s, Susanne Lothar turned her attention to film and television. In 1993, she performed in the Italian TV production Il giovane Mussolini, directed by Gianluigi Calderone. In 1997, she started working with director Michael Haneke, who chose her for a leading role in Funny Games, a parable on violence. Other films she has made with the Austrian director include Das Schloss and Die Klavierspielerin (2001). In 1997, she was nominated for the Deutscher Filmpreis for her rendition of the leading role in Engelchen, directed by Heike Misselwitz. These performances were followed by roles in Der Stellvertreter, directed by Costa Gravas, Hans W. Geißendörfer’s Schneeland, and Nemesis by Nicole Mosleh. In 2008, she displayed her funny side in Xaver Schwarzenberger’s TV film Und ewig schweigen die Männer. In 2009, she again occupied a leading role: this time in Michael Haneke’s film Das Weiße Band, which won several awards.

Recent productions include Die kommenden Tage by Lars Kraume, Die verlorene Zeit by Anna Justice, and Andreas Veiel's Wer, wenn nicht wir, which traces the story of the RAF. Here, Susanne Lothar plays the role of Gudrun Ensslin's mother. From July 2010 on, she will be appearing in BBC TV’s new screening of Murder on the Orient Express.