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Hannah-Rebecca Herzsprung, born 1981, is the daughter of actor Bernd Herzsprung. She started her acting career in 1997 and for two years played the character Mimi in the TV series "Aus heiterem Himmel". In the following years, Herzsprung appeared in several minor parts in TV movies such as Dennis Satin's "Mädchen, böses Mädchen" or Tim Trageser's "Emilia – Die zweite Chance" as well as in TV series like "Soko 5113". In 2005, Herzsprung made her movie debut in "Vier Minuten" ("Four Minutes"). Her portrayal of a talented piano player and prison inmate in Chris Kraus' award-winning drama won Herzsprung a Bavarian film prize in 2007.
In the same year, Herzsprung was awarded the German Film Prize for Best Supproting actress for her portrayal of a rebellious daughter in Alain Gsponer's "Das wahre Leben" ("Life, Actually"). Furthermore, she was proclaimed "Shooting Star 2008" by the jury of the European Film Promotion (EFP) – an honour, which effectively made her an emissary of European Cinema in the world for one year.
Following that, she performed in Rudolf Thome's "Pink", played the young Bavarian comedian Liesl Karlstadt in "Liesl Karlstadt und Karl Valentin" and joined the all-star-ensemble of Uli Edel's highly anticipated take on German terrorism "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex" ("The Baader Meinhof Complex"). In the autumn of 2008, she was also cast member of Nicolai Rohde's drama"10 Sekunden" ("Ten Seconds"), which depicts the harrowing consequences of a plane crash
After playing supporting roles in the drama "Der Vorleser" ("The Reader", 2008) that featured an international cast of actors and in Margarethe von Trotta's film "Vision – Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen" ("Vision", 2009), Herzsprung starred in two fairly different films on the movie screen in late 2009: In the documentary film "Andula – Besuch in einem anderen Leben", she was seen in re-enacted scenes and portrayed the Czech folk actress Anna Letenska who was murdered during the Nazi regime, while she played the heartthrob of an imposturous novelist in Alain Gsponer's society comedy "Lila, Lila". In 2010 she plays the female leading role in Juraj Herz' historical drama "Habermann" alongside Mark Waschke.
After the acclaimed TV miniseries "Weissensee", the thriller "Hell" (2011) saw her alongside Lars Eidinger and Stipe Erceg as member of a small group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world. As the young med school student Johanna, she again faced a perilous situation in the drama "Wie zwischen Himmel und Erde" ("Escape From Tibet"), when her character is confronted with the Chinese oppression of the Tibetan people during a hiking trip in the Himalayas.
She portrayed a completely different kind of woman in the period piece "Ludwig II.", which was released in 2012: Under the direction of Peter Sehr, Hannah Herzsprung starred as legendary Empress Sissi. Likewise in 2012, she had a bit part as a bodyguard in Til Schweiger's action film "Schutzengel" ("Guardians").
Having already played a nonconformist GDR citizen in the first season of 2010, she stirred some sensation in the second season of the award-winning series "Weissensee" (TV, 2013) in which her character breaks down in the aftermath of her prison term. From 2011 to 2013, Herzsprung was part of the cast of the experimental American Sci-Fi series "H+: The Digital Series" that deals with a future in which the lives of all people almost exclusively take place on the internet.
Her subsequent theatrical features were Vivian Naefe's adaptation of a novel by Katharina Hagena "Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen" ("The Taste of Apple Seeds", 2013): In "Die geliebten Schwestern" ("Beloved Sisters", 2014, directed by Dominik Graf) she starred as the penniless aristocrat Caroline von Lengefeld who, in 1788, shares the time of her life with her sister and the nonconformist poet Friedrich Schiller. The film premiered at the Berlin IFF's competition in 2014 and opened in cinemas the following july.
After playing the clever girlfriend of Tom Schilling's character in the cyber thriller "Who Am I – Kein System ist sicher" ("Who Am I - No System is Safe", 2014), she was one of the leads in the romantic comedy "Traumfrauen" ("Dreamgirls", 2015). This was followed by her turn as the wife of a tormented historian (Lars Eidinger) in Chris Kraus' tragicomedy "Die Blumen von gestern" ("Bloom of Yesterday", 2016).
In 2017, Herzsprung starred alongside Lars Eidinger, Tobias Moretti and Joachim Król in Joachim Lang's "Mackie Messer - Brechts Dreigroschenfilm" ("Mack the Knife – Brecht's Threepenny Film", DE/BE, released 2018), before joining the production of Christian Alvart's action thriller "Steig. Nicht. Aus!" ("Don't. Get. Out!"), in which she plays a steely-nerved explosives expert.
The following year, she was part of the large ensemble of the Netflix series "Dogs of Berlin" (2018) in a supporting role. Directed by and starring alongside Karoline Herfurth, Herzsprung had a leading role in the feature comedy "Sweethearts" (2019), as a dilettante bank robber on the run. She had other leading roles in Joseph Vilsmaier's whimsical comedy "Der Boandlkramer und die ewige Liebe" (2019), Lena Stahl's "Mein Sohn" ("My Son", 2020) and Alain Gsponer's "Wolke unterm Dach" (2022), as a family mother whose sudden death is dealt with in her own unique way by her young daughter. Early 2024 followed the release of Chris Kraus' "15 Jahre" ("15 Years", 2021), a sequel to his acclaimed box office success "Vier Minuten" ("Four Minutes").