Franka Potente

Franka Potente
Born: Jul 22, 1974
Career: 1996-2010
Countries: Germany
USA
Spain
Genre/Type: Comedy Drama
Action
Drama
Thriller
Spy Film
Biography by Rebecca Flint Marx
Best known to international audiences for her portrayal of the flame-haired, hyper-kinetic heroine of Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998), Franka Potente is one of Germany's fastest rising young actresses. Born on July 22, 1974, in the town of Dülmen, Potente was educated at Munich's Otto Falkenberg Schule and the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York. According to legend, she was "discovered" as an actress by a casting agent who saw her in a bar restroom one night and asked her to describe herself in one sentence.

Potente made an auspicious film debut in Hans-Christian Schmid's 1996 film Nach Fünf im Urwald, for which she won that year's Bavarian Film Prize for Young Talent; she subsequently did a good deal of television work before enjoying her international breakthrough in Run Lola Run. A huge hit in Germany and a sleeper success in the States, the film featured Potente in a state of constant locomotion, running through time and fate to save her boyfriend from the clutches of his gangster employers. Her performance, which combined urgency, unflappable verve, and surprising warmth, earned her the respect of any number of critics, and she found herself -- alongside director and then-boyfriend Tom Tykwer -- being hailed as one of the European cinema's most exciting new talents.

Earning a German Shooting Stars award from the European Film Promotion in 1998, Potente went on to do starring work in a number of films, including Tykwer's The Princess and the Warrior (2000), which cast her as a lonely mental hospital nurse who falls in love with a disturbed army veteran-cum-thief. The actress' growing international stature was also reflected in her casting as Johnny Depp's girlfriend in Blow (2001), Ted Demme's account of the life of George Jung (Depp), a drug dealer who was instrumental in the rise of cocaine use in the 1970s. International fame continued to grow for the striking actress when, following a small role in the Todd Solandz satire Storytelling (2001), she was cast opposite Matt Damon in director Doug Liman's fast-paced thriller The Bourne Identity. Inspired by Run Lola Run (it not only utilized that film's star, but prominently featured a track from the Lola soundtrack in its advertising campaign), the action thriller started to expand Potente's strong cult appeal into full-blown commercial viability.

After spending the next two years mostly absent from movie houses, Potente re-teamed with Damon for the sequel, The Bourne Supremacy in 2004.

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Filmography

Movie/Film Released Rating Role Buy
The Precious One 2010 Actor [Starring]
Che 2008 Actor [Starring]
Che, Part 1 2008 Actor [Starring]
Romulus, My Father 2007 Actor [Starring]
The Elementary Particles 2006 Actor [Starring]
A Life In Suitcases 2005 Actor [Starring]
Blueprint 2004 Actor [Starring]
Creep 2004 Actor [Starring]
I Love Your Work 2004 Actor [Starring]
The Bourne Supremacy 2004 Actor [Starring]
Anatomy 2 2003 Actor [Starring]
All I Want 2002 Actor [Starring]
The Bourne Identity 2002 Actor [Starring]
Blow 2001 Actor [Starring]
Storytelling 2001 Actor [Starring]
Anatomy 2000 Actor [Starring]
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Videos of Franka Potente

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After finishing high school in Germany, Potente enrolled at the Otto Falckenberg School of Performing Arts in Munich. Potente took acting jobs outside school time and appeared in her first movie in the 1995 student film, Aufbruch. She was t...
The Bourne Identity - I think she really grounded that movie and made it have a Euro road movie feel and took away the big Hollywood element. Every time I said that to Franka, she'd say, "What, you mean I made it small?" And I'd...
Hugh Laurie’s ‘House M.D.’ to Lose Jennifer Morrison as Dr. Allison Cameron; 2009 Premiere Delivers (From HollywoodChicago.com. 27 September 2009, 1:45 AM, PDT) 10 Awesome Foreign Actresses in Movies You Must See! (From The Movie Fanatic. ...

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