1. Franka Potente first appeared in the comedy film After Five in the Forest Primeval, for which she won a Bavarian Film Award for Best Young Actress.
29 Facts About Franka Potente
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Franka Potente's breakthrough came in 1998, when she starred in the acclaimed action thriller Run Lola Run, for which she won a BAMBI Award for Best Actress.
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Franka Potente received further critical acclaim and a Bavarian Television Award nomination for her performance in the television film Opernball.
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Franka Potente portrayed communist revolutionary Tamara Bunke in Che, and psychologist Anita Gregory in The Conjuring 2.
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Franka Potente has starred in the television series Copper, Taboo, Claws, Titans and Echo 3.
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Franka Potente played recurring roles in the second seasons of American Horror Story and The Bridge.
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The elder of two children, Franka Potente was born in Munster, West Germany, and raised in nearby Dulmen.
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Franka Potente's mother, Hildegard, is a medical assistant, and her father, Dieter Potente, is a teacher.
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When she was 17 years old, Franka Potente spent a few months as an exchange student in Humble, a suburb of Houston, Texas.
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Franka Potente took acting jobs outside school time and appeared in her first movie in the 1995 student film Aufbruch.
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Franka Potente was then spotted by a casting agent and appeared in the film Nach Funf im Urwald, directed by her then-boyfriend, Hans Christian Schmid.
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Franka Potente played the role of a 17-year-old girl named Anna who, in search of freedom in an urban environment, runs away from home with a boy who has a crush on her.
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Franka Potente received the 1996 Bavarian Film Award for Young Talent for her work in this film.
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Franka Potente subsequently finished her last year of training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Manhattan.
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Franka Potente returned to Europe and worked in German and French films; her breakthrough came with 1998's Lola rennt after meeting the director, Tom Tykwer, in a cafe.
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The independent film was favorably received by critics; eFilmCritic stated that Franka Potente "proves her versatility as an actress here with a much more subdued character, but is still capable of delivering powerhouse emotional scenes", while the consensus of review-aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes was: "More slow-moving than Run Lola Run, this film nonetheless offers an intriguing storyline about love and fate".
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Franka Potente received nominations for the European Film Award and the German Film Award for Best Actress.
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Franka Potente played a film editor in the controversial independent drama Storytelling, with Leo Fitzpatrick and Selma Blair.
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Franka Potente next found a much wider recognition from audiences for her performance in The Bourne Identity, co-starring Matt Damon.
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In 2006, Franka Potente appeared in the German coming-of-age drama Elementarteilchen, based on the novel Les Particules elementaires by Michel Houellebecq and directed by Oskar Roehler.
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Franka Potente wrote and directed Der die Tollkirsche ausgrabt, a silent released in 2006.
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Franka Potente next starred with Eric Bana and Kodi Smit-McPhee in the Australian drama film Romulus, My Father, about the struggle of a couple to raise their son amid great adversity.
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In Che, a two-part biopic about Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Franka Potente took on the role of communist revolutionary Tamara Bunke.
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Franka Potente filmed the American neo-noir film Shanghai in Bangkok, Thailand, with production wrapping in August 2008.
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Franka Potente starred in BBC America's first original scripted series, Copper, as Eva Heissen, a shrewd German-American businesswoman and the madam of a brothel in the Five Points district of New York City during the American Civil War.
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Franka Potente subsequently had a two-episode appearance in American Horror Story: Asylum, as a woman who claims to be Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank.
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In 2014, Franka Potente landed a role on the second season of the FX series The Bridge as Eleanor Nacht, a "fixer" for the cartel.
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Franka Potente returned to the big screen in the horror sequel The Conjuring 2 as real-life German-British parapsychologist Anita Gregory, who investigated the Enfield Poltergeist case in the late 20th century.
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In 2022, Franka Potente appeared in season four of Titans where she portrayed Mother Mayhem.