Alexandra Maria Lara

Alexandra Maria Lara
Lara at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Alexandra Maria Plătăreanu (1978-11-12) 12 November 1978 Bucharest, Romania
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1997–present
Spouse(s)	Sam Riley (m. 2009)
Children	1

Alexandra Maria Lara (née Plătăreanu; 12 November 1978)^[1] is a Romanian-born German actress best known for her roles in Downfall (2004), Control (2007), Youth Without Youth (2007), The Reader (2008), and Rush (2013).^[2]

Early life

Born in Bucharest, Lara is the only child of Valentin Plătăreanu, a Bucharest actor, and his wife, Doina. When she was four (in 1983) her family decided to flee to West Germany to escape Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime in Communist Romania. Although the family had originally planned to emigrate to Canada, they settled down in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, before eventually moving to Berlin.

After graduating at the Französisches Gymnasium Berlin in 1997, Lara went on studying acting under the management of her father, co-founder of the Theaterwerkstatt Charlottenburg, until 2000. Lara is multilingual. In addition to her native Romanian, she is fluent in German, English, and French.

Career

By sixteen, she was already playing lead roles in various television dramas; since then her career has developed and she has become a respected film actress. Her most famous role to date, which has resulted in international recognition, is Traudl Junge, Adolf Hitler's secretary, in the Academy Award-nominated 2004 film Downfall; following this, Francis Ford Coppola wrote her a letter and gave her a leading role in Youth Without Youth (2007).

Other

• In 2007 she also appeared as journalist Annik Honoré in the film Control, the Ian Curtis biopic.
• In 2008, she served as a member of the Cannes Film Festival jury.
• She played a lead role in Greek director Theo Angelopoulos's 2008 film The Dust of Time, opposite Irène Jacob and Bruno Ganz.
• She has also appeared in several French productions, including Napoléon and L'Affaire Farewell.
• More recently, she appeared in The Reader and Der Baader Meinhof Komplex which were both nominated for the 81st Academy Awards (best picture and best foreign language film, respectively).

Personal life

In August 2009, she married English actor Sam Riley, with whom she acted in the films Control and Suite Française.^[3] In January 2014, she gave birth to their first child, a boy.^[4][5]

Filmography

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alexandra Maria Lara.

• (German) Official website
• Alexandra Maria Lara at the Internet Movie Database
• (German) Interview