Franka Potente
German Hollywood export turns 50
© Eventpress / Picture Alliance
Definitively more than a one-hit wonder is the German Hollywood export Franka Potente. The career so far of the “Run Lola Run” star.
She is a star and the center of one of the biggest German film successes of the past decades – and yet she has almost vanished from the public eye in the past 15 years. The German Hollywood export Franka Potente, 50, became world famous in the late 90s through Tom Tykwer’s Berlin thriller “Run Lola Run,” and was once predicted to have a great film star career. On Monday, July 22, 2024, she will turn 50 years old.
After Franka Potente had run through the German capital in Doc Martens in search of 100,000 Marks, she starred alongside Johnny Depp, 61, in the cocaine film “Blow” and beside Matt Damon, 53, in the action hits “The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy.” However, she did not achieve the big breakthrough in Hollywood at that time – possibly also because Potente was too unconventional for the dream factory.
Since her major film career stagnated, the now 50-year-old has appeared in various US TV productions. In Los Angeles, she and her husband Derek Richardson, 48, raise their two daughters Polly and Georgie.
Franka Potente: Her huge success with “Run Lola Run”
“Run Lola Run” by director Tykwer, with whom Potente was in a relationship for some time after filming, is still captivating today as a breathless Berlin film with a pumping soundtrack, a cool heroine in raver look, and formal brilliance. Potente instantly became an international acting star through the most successful German film in the USA since Wolfgang Petersen’s, †81, “Das Boot.”
© Action Press
She moved to Hollywood but did not conform to the mechanisms and constraints of the dream factory. Thus, she publicly criticized Hollywood’s portrayal of women, showed up in sneakers at film premieres, spoiled the death of her character in the second “Bourne” installment, and once responded brilliantly when a journalist asked her during the time of “The Bourne Identity” about her allegedly too big backside: “That Matt Damon got to fall in love with a woman with my butt – the whole world is grateful for that.”
Switch to series and starting a family
In Germany, Potente had already achieved everything by this time, receiving the Bambi and the German Film Award for “Run Lola Run,” and then another German Film Award for Stefan Ruzowitzky’s, 62, still watchable slasher “Anatomy.” However, her major film career stalled somewhat after the “Bourne Supremacy” in 2004.
© Newscom World / imago images
For Oskar Roehler, 65, the actress filmed in Germany in 2006 with her “Run Lola Run” co-star Moritz Bleibtreu, 52, in the Houellebecq adaptation “Elementary Particles” and appeared in 2008 for “Che – Guerrilla” by Steven Soderbergh, 61. Between 2010 and 2016, the native of Dülmen was not seen in a single feature film. The dry spell on screen did not end until James Wan’s, 47, horror sequel “Conjuring 2.”
What was Potente doing during this time? In 2012, she married American actor Derek Richardson. Their daughters were born in 2011 and 2013. The family lives in Los Angeles.
The actress already ruled out a return to Germany in 2016. “Our center of life is in the USA. For us, work and life happen here,” Potente revealed to the news agency spot on news in an interview at that time. Moreover, her husband does not speak a word of German.
In addition, Potente has repeatedly appeared in US series productions. For example, in “House,” “American Horror Story,” the US remake of the Scandinavian crime series “The Bridge – Transit to Death,” or the magnificent, mystical historical series “Taboo” starring Tom Hardy, 46. An amazing acting career. Potente never quite managed to top her great initial success.
Source used: stern.de