Barbara Sukowa

Barbara Sukowa is a German actress of screen and stage as well as a singer. She is best known for her collaborations with directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Margarethe von Trotta and her prominent role in the New German Cinema. Over her career, Sukowa has won three German Film Awards for Best Actress, three Bavarian Film Awards, the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and a Venice Film Festival Award. She has also been nominated for European Film Awards, César Awards, and Grammy Awards.

Born in Bremen, Germany, on 2 February 1950, Sukowa speaks German, English, and French. She studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna before making her stage debut in Berlin in 1971 in Peter Handke's Der Ritt über den Bodensee. Sukowa subsequently joined the ensemble of the Darmstädter National Theatre and performed in Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg under directors like Luc Bondy. Her stage roles included Marion in Danton's Death, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Rosalind in As You Like It, Desdemona in Othello, and a role in Ibsen's The Master Builder.

Sukowa achieved acclaim for her performance as Mieze in Fassbinder's miniseries Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), earning the German Best Young Actress Award. She then starred in Fassbinder's drama film Lola (1981), winning her first German Film Award for Best Actress. That same year, she starred in Margarethe von Trotta's Marianne and Juliane, earning a German Film Award and the Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actress. Sukowa won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress and another German Film Award for her performance in von Trotta's biographical drama Rosa Luxemburg (1986).

In 1991, Sukowa moved to Brooklyn, New York City. During the 1990s, she appeared in international films such as Volker Schlöndorff's Voyager and Lars von Trier's Europa, earning European Film Award nominations for both. She also acted in M. Butterfly, Johnny Mnemonic, Cradle Will Rock, and The Third Miracle. In 1997, she won a Bavarian Film Award for Best Actress for her work in In the Name of Innocence.

Sukowa has also established a career as a classical music narrator and speaker. She has performed the Speaker's role in Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire worldwide and in Schoenberg's Gurrelieder. Her musical recordings include works with the Vienna Philharmonic, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. For her work on Reinbert de Leeuw's Im wunderschönen Monat Mai, Sukowa received a Grammy Award nomination. Additionally, she is the lead singer of the band the X-Patsys, which she co-founded with Jon Kessler and Robert Longo.

Sukowa continued her film career with roles as Hildegard of Bingen in Vision (2009) and the title philosopher in Hannah Arendt (2012), winning Bavarian Film Awards for both performances. She starred as Katarina Jones in the television series 12 Monkeys (2015–2018) and earned a Lumière Award and a César Award nomination for the French film Two of Us (2019). Her recent credits include television roles in Hunters, Servant, and The Swarm, as well as playing Gala Dalí in the film Dalíland (2022).

Sukowa was married to Hans-Michael Rehberg, was in a relationship with Daniel Olbrychski, and was married to artist and director Robert Longo until their separation in 2018. She has three sons, one from each of these relationships.