Julia Hunter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Julia Jäger at the 2014 Grimme Prize award ceremony

Julia Jäger (born January 28, 1970 in Angermünde , GDR ) is a German actress . The former theater actress has worked in more than 70 film and television productions since the early 1990s. She gained fame primarily through her numerous appearances in crime series, including Donna Leon from 2003 to 2019 , and her role in the Oscar- winning short toy Land (2007). She often embodies melancholy female characters.

Life

childhood and education

Julia Jäger is the daughter of the theater actor Diether Jäger and came into contact with acting at an early age. As a child, she received a small part in Rolf Losansky 's children's film Moritz in the advertising column in 1983 . She grew up in Frankfurt (Oder) . Her father played at the Kleist Theater there .

As a ninth grader, Jäger applied to the Leipzig theater school "Hans Otto" , but was initially rejected. She attended the extended secondary school "Karl Liebknecht" in Frankfurt (Oder) and played there in the student theater Theater in der Senke in a production of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1988 she was accepted to study acting at the Leipzig Theater Academy. Jäger, who, in retrospect, described themselves as “unsteady, restless” in their youth, was allowed to repeat the initially failed entrance exam as an exception. Her first engagement at the Leipziger Schauspielhaus followed her studies from 1991 to 1995 . There she made her debut with the role of Hedwig in Henrik Ibsen's Die Wildente . After that, she should no longer be tied to any stage.

First film roles

While still an acting student, Julia Jäger was given the female lead in Maxim Dessau's historical film First Loss (1990), which was filmed in Jena when the Wall came down in 1989 . For her portrayal of a young married peasant woman who fell in love with a Russian prisoner of war assigned to her as a servant during the Second World War (portrayed by Pawel Sanajew ), she received the Max Ophüls Prize in 1991 for best young actress. After the ZDF television film Hund und Katz (1991), Jäger became known to a broad German cinema audience through Detlev Bucks Karniggels (1991). In the award-winning "Country-Krimi" comedy she was seen at the side of Bernd Michael Lade as police colleague Nina Steenhagen , who both go on the hunt for a mysterious "cow slasher" in the Schleswig-Holstein province.

Jäger achieved her greatest success in the cinema to date with the female lead in Andreas Kleinert's turnaround drama Beside Time (1995) with Rosel Zech and Sylvester Groth . In it she was seen as a young station master from a small town in East Germany who falls in love with a deserted Russian soldier (played by Mikhail Poretschenkow). The Süddeutsche Zeitung described Jäger as "very powerful and fresh", the daily newspaper as "enchanting". Her performance as Sophie was rewarded in 1996 with a nomination for the German Film Prize for best actress . In the same year Jäger won the Actor Award at the Cairo International Film Festival .

TV work and denied leading role in "Anniversaries"

From the mid-1990s, Jäger turned more and more to work on German television. After several appearances in the crime series Polizeiruf 110 , she shot for the Sat.1 production Natascha - Race with Death (1996) directed by Bernd Böhlich . Together with Florian Martens, she played the bear parents who refused chemotherapy for their daughter Natascha . In the following year she took on another female lead in another Sat.1 production entitled Terror in the Name of Love . She played the young Kerstin, who becomes the stalking victim of her own fiancé Gregor ( Johannes Brandrup ), just because he was jealous of their best man Martin ( Anian Zollner ). In the same year she was seen as a suspected murder nurse in the ARD film Gentle Murders and impressed critics in Somewhere else the sun shines with her portrayal of a single mother and shipbuilding engineer who is confronted with the diagnosis of AIDS . The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised the “concentrated actress”, while the taz saw the part as “unpretentiously haunting”.

In 1998, however, the television project Anniversaries , based on the novel of the same name by Uwe Johnson , turned out to be a professional and personal disappointment . Originally, the 15 million mark four-part series was to be staged by Frank Beyer for ARD . The director personally selected Julia Jäger for the main role of Gesine Cresspahl after working with her on the television film Nikolaikirche (1995). According to Beyer, however, a few weeks before shooting began , the production company Eikon insisted on changing Jäger and parting with his long-time assistant director, which he refused. Thereupon he was forced out of the project, according to his own statements, while the WDR spoke of a voluntary departure. Despite one of Volker Schlöndorff initiated declaration of solidarity for Beyer, the 26 well-known artists have supported, was anniversaries of Margarethe von Trotta with Suzanne von Borsody filmed in the main role for the Golden Camera received. Years later, Jäger couldn't get over the failed television project. "I found it so disappointing in human terms," ​​said the actress in a 2004 portrait in the Berliner Zeitung .

Recurring role as Paola Brunetti and Oscar success with Toy Land

After the failure, Jäger continued to work mainly for German television. In 1999 she worked again with Andreas Kleinert on the multi-part series Klemperer - A Life in Germany , the film adaptation of Victor Klemperer's diaries . In 2000 the female lead followed in Torsten C. Fischer's drama The Just Judge alongside Frank Giering , which was based on the story of the same name by Anna Seghers . Another collaboration with Fischer followed on the psychological thriller The Lawyer and his Guest with Heino Ferch and Götz George in the title roles. Jäger was nominated for the German Television Award in 2003 for her supporting role, the public prosecutor Wachleitner, who tends to be malicious . In an interview with the FAZ in 2003, Jäger nevertheless regretted that she had never found a continuous working relationship with a director.

In the same year she was remembered by a broad German television audience through the crime series Donna Leon , which is based on the successful Commissario Brunetti novels by the author of the same name , which are set in Venice . With Uwe Kockisch as the married couple Brunetti , she replaced Joachim Król and Barbara Auer, who played in the first four episodes . Hans-Dieter Seidel in the FAZ remarked that, in contrast to the previous cast, Kockisch and Jäger corresponded to the figures "precisely in terms of contours", as the "reading mood" would have fantasized about. "Even the fashionable, but also strict glasses that Paola Brunetti has been wearing lately and the ingeniously folded hair adorn and characterize the literature lecturer, complemented by a strikingly self-confident demeanor of the finest nobility," says Seidel. Jäger also received good reviews in the same year for the lead role of Katja in Friedemann Fromm's WDR thriller Zeit der Rache. In this she was seen as a medical journalist who, after the death of her father, found out that he was exposed to radioactive rays as an "enemy of the state" in the GDR. The FAZ praised Jäger for her intensely played figure, which the Hamburger Abendblatt interpreted as cool and withdrawn. The Berliner Zeitung saw a credible change in the main female character. According to General-Anzeiger, the "actress for the quiet tones" carries the film. Jäger herself said that she had never recorded and played a character with Katja over such a long period of time. She was nominated for the Grimme Prize in 2004 for Donna Leon and Zeit der Rache as well as for her appearances in the crime series Bella Block , Polizeiruf 110 and in the business thriller Das Account (as the wife of Heino Ferch ) .

By 2012, Jäger appeared in 14 more episodes as Paola Brunetti. In addition to other appearances in television films and crime series, including the recurring role of the doctor Leilah Berg in The Last Witness (2002-2003), the actress also took on guest roles in series such as Alone Against Time , Der Bergdoktor , In All Friendship or Löwenzahn and the movies The loneliness of the crocodiles (2000), Berlin is in Germany (2001) and Schöne Frauen (2004). Jäger became known to a global cinema audience through her role as a self-sacrificing mother in Jochen Alexander Freydank's short film Toy Land (2007), who happened to save a Jewish child from the neighborhood from being deported to the East. The film, for which the actress had waived her fee, won an Oscar in 2009 . In 2011, Jäger worked again with Freydank on the Tatort episode Home Front .

In 2008 Jäger could be seen at the comedy on Kurfürstendamm in Agnès Jaouis and Jean-Pierre Bacri's conversation comedy And evening guests , directed by Andreas Schmidt, alongside Steffen Münster , Götz Otto , Tim Wilde and Bettina Lamprecht .

Private

Julia Jäger is married to Thomas Förster and lives in Berlin . The couple has a son (* 2001) and twin daughters (* 2004).

In a portrait of the Berliner Zeitung in 2004, Jäger described himself as a public shy and plagued by self-doubt. "I would like to be able to take some things more easily," said Jäger, who had already turned down invitations to television interviews out of fear after she had won the Max Ophüls Prize. “In talk shows, I can't hide behind my character with learned texts. Because that's the only way I can release overwhelming energy. ”Originally subscribed to heavily laden figures, she also tried light fabrics in her career to get away“ from that eternally silent face, wordless and the camera holds and holds and holds, ”says Jäger . “The way things are, I worry about all sorts of problems. So I can play something like that too. "

In 2009 she became godmother in addition to her fellow actor Matthias Brandt in the association “Berliner Herz”, an outpatient children's hospice service that voluntarily accompanies seriously and terminally ill children in families and clinics.

Filmography

movie theater

Television (selection)

Radio plays

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : Julia Jäger  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara Jänichen: People News: Birthday surprise for actress Julia Jäger . In: Berliner Morgenpost , January 29, 2008, p. 30
  2. ↑ a b c Dirk Westphal: It was like a beautiful dream . In: Berliner Morgenpost , March 8, 2009, p. 28
  3. ↑ a b c Hans-Dieter Seidel: Perfectly left . In: FAZ , October 31, 2003, p. 40
  4. ↑ Lutz Gräfe: Karniggels . In: film-dienst 22/1991 (accessed via Munzinger Online )
  5. ↑ Martina Knoben: Every look opens the world. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 31, 1996, p. 14
  6. ↑ Andreas Becker: Oststuben - threatened by Aldi markets . In: taz , May 9, 1996, p. 16
  7. ^ Night of the Comedians: Nominations for the Federal Film Prize . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 28, 1996, p. 15
  8. ↑ SUNDAY March 31st: Natascha - Race with Death. In: Der Spiegel 13/1996 . March 25, 1996, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Patrick Bahners: Diary: The great freedom happiness . In: FAZ , October 22, 1997, p. 44
  10. ↑ Ulla Küspert: Without any sentimentality . In: taz , July 11, 1997, p. 18
  11. ↑ Absurd accusation. In: Focus , No. 37/1998, pp. 228-229
  12. ↑ Diary: Displaced . In: FAZ , December 9, 1998, p. 42
  13. ↑ a b Then not . In: Berliner Zeitung , January 2, 2004; portrait
  14. ^ Hans-Dieter Seidel: With X-rays against enemies of the state . In: FAZ , March 26, 2003, p. 45
  15. ↑ Barbara Möller: Deadly rays for dissidents? In: Hamburger Abendblatt , March 26, 2003
  16. ↑ Contaminated by the Stasi . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 26, 2003
  17. ^ Rainer Tittelbach: In search of "Father State" . In: General-Anzeiger , March 26, 2003
  18. ^ Anne Vorbringer: Back from the fairyland . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 26, 2009, p. 28
  19. ↑ Bettina Göcmener: Eating with obstacles . In: Berliner Morgenpost , February 21, 2008, p. 18
  20. ↑ Dirk Westphal: About the person . In: Berliner Morgenpost , March 8, 2009, p. 28
  21. ↑ a b Julia Jäger: Mrs. Brunetti from Angermünde. In: Berliner Kurier , October 28, 2005, p. 29
personal data
SURNAME Hunter, Julia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actress
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Angermünde , Germany