Nora von Waldstätten

Nora Marie-Theres Beatrice Elisabeth Waldstätten, formerly known in German productions as Nora von Waldstätten, is an Austrian actress. Born on 1 December 1981 in Vienna, Austria, she is best known for her roles across film, television, and theatrical productions in Austria and Germany.

Waldstätten was raised in Baden bei Wien, Austria, as the third of four children in a family descended from old Austrian nobility. Her ancestry includes a baroness and great-great-great-grandmother who was a purported patron of Mozart, as well as a great-grandfather, Egon Freiherr von Waldstätten, who served as an Austrian military general and scholarly writer. During her childhood, she frequently visited the Akademietheater and Burgtheater. After an unsuccessful period aiming to become a prima ballerina, she began her acting work at the Stadttheater Baden, where she landed her first speaking role.

At age nineteen, Waldstätten relocated to Berlin, Germany, settling in Prenzlauer Berg in the early 2000s. She formally studied acting at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2003 to 2007. Drama school offered her a protective space to experiment and overcome initial feelings of shyness and fear. During her studies, she practiced monologues alongside actress Jutta Lampe and sang musical pieces by Bertolt Brecht and Billy Joel.

While in her first year of acting studies, Waldstätten secured her first commercial film role. In 2004 and 2005, she appeared in small roles in Constantin von Jascheroff's Jargo and Christoph Hochhäusler's Falsche Bekenner. She achieved wider recognition co-starring in Irene von Alberti's 2008 German-Moroccan film Tangerine, followed by her role as a student murderer in the 2009 episode Herz aus Eis of the police procedural series Tatort.

Following her breakout television role, Waldstätten appeared in the 2009 film Schwerkraft. In 2010, she played Magdalena Kopp in Olivier Assayas' miniseries Carlos, a project centered on Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal that received recognition at the Cannes Film Festival and won a Golden Globe Award. Her subsequent work included starring in the 2012 television adaptation of Ken Follett's novel World Without End, the 2015 Austrian series Altes Geld, and Assayas' 2016 film Personal Shopper alongside Kristen Stewart and Lars Eidinger. Between 2014 and 2022, she co-starred with Matthias Koeberlin in 15 feature-length episodes of the crime series Murder by the Lake.

In addition to her screen acting, Waldstätten has performed extensively on stage. Beginning in 2007, she acted in several productions at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, including Elfriede Jelinek's play Über Animals. In 2010, she also performed in two stage plays at the Schauspiel Köln.

Throughout her career, Waldstätten has earned notable honors. She received the New Faces Award in 2009 for her performance in Tatort. At the 31st Max Ophüls Film Festival in January 2010, she was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize for best female newcomer for her work in Schwerkraft. In 2011, she also appeared in a short film testimonial for the Austrian beverage bottler Vöslauer.

Regarding her professional name, Waldstätten used von Waldstätten as a stage name early in her German career, but largely ceased using von publicly by 2010 in light of Austrian legal restrictions on noble titles, fully discontinuing its use in Germany by late 2016. As of that time, she was based in Berlin.