| Margit Carstensen | |
|---|---|
| Born | Margit Carstensen February 29, 1940 Kiel, Germany |
| Occupation | Theatre and Film Actress |
| Awards |
German Film Award (Gold) – Best Actress 2002 Scherbentanz |
Margit Carstensen (born 29 February 1940) is a German theatre and film actress, best known outside Germany for roles in the works of film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
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Margit Carstensen is the daughter of a physician, and was born and raised in the north-German city of Kiel. Upon graduation from the local Gymnasium in 1958, she attended acting school in Hamburg.[1] This education led to her first stage appearances in Kleve, Heilbronn, Münster and Braunschweig. In 1965 Margit Carstensen received a four year engagement with the Deutsches Schauspielhaus (German Playhouse) in Hamburg. There she played leading roles in plays by, among others, John Osborne and the classical Spanish playwright Lope de Vega.
In 1969 she gained local fame in the Theater am Goetheplatz in Bremen, where she met director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.[2] She then worked under his direction in a comedy by the eighteenth century Venetian Carlo Goldoni The Coffee Shop (which was recorded for television in 1970), bringing her to national fame. She subsequently played the role of serial murderess Geesche Gottfried in the premiere of Fassbinder’s own play Bremen Freedom (also televised, in 1972), and then in the title role of his Henrik Ibsen adaptation Nora Helmer (televised in 1974) derived from A Doll's House.
From 1973-76 Carstensen held a steady acting engagement in Darmstadt, and from 1976-77 once again in Hamburg. In 1977 she moved to what was then West Berlin, where she performed on the highly-regarded Staatliche Schauspielbühnen. In 1982 she moved to Stuttgart in order to work with director Hansgünther Heyme, where she appeared in a series of plays directed by him.[3] Over the years she also performed in many smaller roles on the most important of the German-language stages, for example making several appearances in the Munich Kammerspiele.
By the late 1980s she had developed ongoing working relationships with well-known German directors Werner Schroeter, Christoph Schlingensief and Leander Haußmann.[4] In 1995 she followed Haußmann to Bochum, in order to work with him there [5]. For the season of 2003/04 Ms. Carstensen appeared in the Vienna Burgtheater, in the premiere of Elfriede Jelinek’s play “Bambiland,” under direction of Schlingensief.[6]
In 2008 she appeared in the Schauspielhaus Bochum (Playhouse Bochum), in Shakespeare's As You Like It.[7]
Carstensen is best known outside Germany for the many film and television productions of Rainer Werner Fassbinder in which she acted. She played leading roles in the Fassbinder films The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), her best-known role for Fassbinder; Martha (1974), with Karlheinz Böhm, analysing a traditional marriage in a contemporary setting; Fear of Fear (1975); Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven (1975); Satan's Brew (1976); Chinese Roulette (1976) and Women in New York (1977). She also appeared in individual episodes of two Fassbinder television productions: Eight Hours Are Not a Day (1972), and Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). [8]
Carstensen also participated in international productions. In the third film made by Polish director Andrzej Żuławski, Possession (1981), a French-German coproduction, she performed together with Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill und Heinz Bennent. Four years later she worked with Polish-born director Agnieszka Holland on her film Angry Harvest (1985), together with Armin Mueller-Stahl.[9] This film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Her artistic collaboration with director Christoph Schlingensief began with two of his film projects. In his Adolf Hitler - A Hundred Years: The Last Hours in the Führer’s Bunker (1989), she played the part of Magda Goebbels. In his satirical political spoof Terror 2000: Intensive Care Germany (1992), she played the role of a Detective.
Carstensen has appeared in films by directors such as Leander Haußmann (Sonnenallee, 1999); Romuald Karmakar (Manila, 2000); Chris Kraus (Scherbentanz, 2002, a role for which she won the Bavarian Film Award for Best Actress)[10]; Oskar Roehler (Agnes and His Brothers, 2004) and Detlev Buck (Hands off Mississippi, 2007).
Over the 2007/08 season Carstensen assisted with the Austrian-German TV documentary Mr. Karl – A Person for People, directed by Kurt Mayer.[11]
Margit Carstensen has received many awards in her career. Among these are the 1973 German Film Awards (Gold), for her acting in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,[12] and the 2002 Bavarian Film Award, for her acting in Scherbentanz. In 1972 she was chosen by the German Film Critics Guild as Best Actress of the Year.[13]
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