With “Run Lola Run” and her fire-red hair, Franka Potente achieved international fame – that was about 25 years ago. Today, the California resident celebrates her 50th birthday.
Los Angeles – A few weeks before her 50th birthday, Franka Potente is a sought-after interview guest in US media. The California resident owes this to her iconic role in “Run Lola Run”. Under this title, the cult film “Lola rennt” by director Tom Tykwer premiered in American cinemas 25 years ago. Lead actress Potente is celebrating twice the age today.
Just in time for the 25th anniversary, at the beginning of June, the film returned to US theaters in a new 4K restoration. The mother of two from Dülmen in North Rhine-Westphalia looks back nostalgically in interviews.
A reporter from KTLA in Los Angeles wanted to know what makes “Run Lola Run” so timeless. “The film has a fast pace and a pretty simple narrative structure. You have 20 minutes to save your friend – that has the same energy today as it did 25 years ago,” says Potente. With her long blonde hair, she beams at the camera; she had discarded the fiery red Lola hairstyle immediately after the shoot.
Lola runs without training
That was in the summer of 1997, when Potente was 23 years old and already had some film experience. She stated back then that her career goal had been clear since she was 15. She studied acting in Munich for two years, supplemented by seminars at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York. Her first leading role came in 1995 in the coming-of-age comedy “Nach Fünf im Urwald”. The breakthrough then came with the award-winning action thriller “Lola rennt”, which premiered in Germany in the fall of 1998.
In it, the red-haired Lola (Potente) has twenty minutes to raise 100,000 marks to save her petty criminal boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). Lola runs through Berlin in three versions – with lots of speed, techno, and digital effects. Each attempt is similar, but small changes have significant consequences.
Of course, Potente had to run a lot during filming, but she did not train for it. “I hadn’t prepared for it at all,” she told the US industry magazine “Variety” in June. At that time, she was also smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. She was simply swept away by the energy on set.
The more problematic issue was the hair color. Her jet-black dyed hair had to be bleached eight times in a row. She was not allowed to wash her hair during the shoot, as the red color would have washed out.
There was a spark between the actress and director Tykwer at the time, and they became a couple. At the same time, this marked the beginning of Potente’s international career. She made her Hollywood debut alongside Johnny Depp in “Blow” (2001), about the rise and fall of cocaine dealer George Jung in the 1970s. Shortly afterward, she starred in the comedy “Try Seventeen” with “Lord of the Rings” star Elijah Wood. This also led to a romance, which, however, ended after a few months.
Acclaim from Hollywood
This was followed by the spy thrillers “The Bourne Identity” (2002) and “The Bourne Supremacy” (2004) with Matt Damon as the agent who has lost his memory and Potente as his lover and savior. “Franka is really a very, very good actress,” Damon praised her at the time. “She is professional, disciplined, and talented. She works very hard; maybe that’s indeed a German trait.”
In the fall of 2004, she packed her bags to seek her fortune in Los Angeles. After nearly a year, she returned to Berlin but continued to work with international stars. US director Steven Soderbergh cast her opposite Benicio Del Toro in “Che,” about the life of Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara.
Two children as well
Potente took on the leading role in the biographical drama “Beate Uhse – The Right to Love” (2011) about the sex entrepreneur. That year, the actress, now living in the USA again, became a mother for the first time. In 2012, she married US actor Derek
Richardson, whom she had met while filming an episode of “Dr. House.” A year later, their second daughter was born.
In German, the California-born actress wrote her first novel “Gradually It Becomes Day” (2014). In it, she describes the fate of a man in his late forties who suddenly loses his job and his wife and searches for answers.
She then stepped behind the camera and made her feature film directorial debut “Home” in 2021. The setting is the impoverished American hinterland, where a man (Jake McLaughlin) returns after 17 years of imprisonment. Oscar winner Kathy Bates plays his sick mother. Long takes bring tranquility to the independent film. Potente has already proven her fast-paced talent as running Lola.