Age: 51
female
Nina Hoss (born July 7, 1975) is a German stage and film actress. Hoss acted in radio plays at the age of seven and appeared on stage for the first time at the age of 14. In 1997 she graduated from the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. Her first major success was the title role Rosemarie Nitribitt of Bernd Eichinger's A Girl Called Rosemary in 1996, a period drama (based on an actual scandal) set in the 1950s that looks back at the days of West Germany's postwar Wirtschaftswunder with a curdling cynicism. In 2000 she was one of the Shooting Stars at the Berlinale. Her close collaboration with director Christian Petzold has been extremely successful: she won the 2003 Adolf Grimme Award for her role in his film Something to Remind Me and two years later the Adolf Grimme Award in Gold for Wolfsburg. Her performance of Yella, earned her the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2007 and the German Film Award in 2008. Another collaboration with Petzold, Barbara, in which Hoss plays a doctor exiled to an East German provincial backwater in 1980, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011 and the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012.
Nina Hoss
Ursula Kramer
for Ursula Kramer in The Sorrows of Young Werther
Suggested by sepanta_kazemi
The story follows Werther, a sensitive young artist who leaves behind everything familiar, hoping to escape the weight of his past. In his letters to his friend Wilhelm, he tries to understand his own heart, a heart that pulls him toward joy and despair with equal force. He settles in a quiet village in the spring of 1771, seeking rest, beauty, and a return to himself. But at a local gathering he meets Charlotte. She is kind, graceful, grounded — and already engaged to Albert. In that moment, Werther’s fate is sealed. What begins as admiration becomes an overwhelming love. Charlotte’s gentle presence becomes the center of his inner world. He spends long days speaking with her, walking with her, memorizing every gesture. She cares for him with warmth and honesty, yet always within the boundaries of loyalty to her fiancé. For Werther, this half-light becomes torture. He knows he cannot have her, yet cannot leave her. The conflict consumes him. His letters capture every shift of emotion — tenderness, jealousy, hope, guilt. The villagers around him seem cold, dull, hostile. He feels misunderstood, misplaced, trapped in a world that cannot hold the intensity of his feelings. Even his art dries up. Nature itself becomes an echo of his sorrow. Werther tries to leave the village, to free himself from the longing that is destroying him. But he returns, drawn back by a love that has already defined him. What he finds upon returning only deepens his despair. His guilt grows. His loneliness sharpens. His sense of shame and fear of public judgment haunt him. Werther sees no escape from the impossible triangle he is trapped in — Charlotte, Albert, and himself. To him, love becomes both a sanctuary and a prison, something sacred and yet unbearable. His final act emerges from a soul torn between passion, idealism, and the unbearable truth that the life he longs for will never exist. Werther’s name itself carries two meanings — “island” and “more precious” — perfectly capturing the essence of his character: isolated, idealistic, and set apart from the ordinary world by the sheer intensity of his heart.
