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PERSONALITIES Germany

Actress Susanne Lothar passes away at 51

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- Five years after the death of her husband, actor Ulrich Mühe, Haneke’s muse leaves us

The news was announced by the family’s lawyer without any further explanation. The actress Susanne Lothar passed away yesterday at the age of 51. Her death comes five years after cancer took away her actor-husband Ulrich Mühe, while the world had just paid unanimous tribute to his incredible performance in The Lives of Others [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Florian Henckel von Donners…
interview: Ulrich Muehe
film profile
]
. She leaves behind two children.

Lothar, a daughter of actors, trained at the Hochschule für Theater und Musik (School of Theatre and Music) in Hamburg, then on scene at the Hamburg Theatre. Her very first appearance on the big screen in Tankred Dorst’s Eisenhans (original title: Strange Fruits) won her a German Film Award, but the role that would bring her international fame was that of the victim persecuted by two, inexplicably cruel youths, starring alongside Mühe in 1997 in Haneke’s Funny Games, just after the kafkaesque The Castle, in which the couple co-starred. The couple tied the knot the same year. She collaborated with the Austrian helmer again, twice at Cannes for The Pianist (2001) and The White Ribbon [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michael Haneke
film profile
]
(2009).

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Lothar also starred in Stephen Daldry’s international hit The Reader [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
and played the mother of Gudrun Ensslin in Andres Veiel’s award-winning film at Berlin If Not Us, Who? [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(2011). Another noteworthy contribution was her role in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Anna Karenina [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
which has just been selected for Toronto.

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(Translated from French)

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