Marianne Sägebrecht

Weitere Namen
Marianne Saegebrecht (Schreibvariante)
Cast, Screenplay
Starnberg

Biography

Marianne Sägebrecht was born in Starnberg on August 27, 1945. During her school years she gained her first acting experiences in a theater group. After completing secondary school, she trained as a medical-technical assistant. At the age of 19 she got married, her daughter was born in 1967. From 1971 to 1975 she ran the cabaret restaurant "Spinnradl" with her husband and sister in Starnberg.

In 1976 Sägebrecht divorced her husband and moved to Munich. As manager of the Schwabing artists' pub "Mutti Bräu" she came into contact with numerous actors, cabaret artists and members of the Roncalli Circus. She later described her acquaintance with the playwright and actor Martin Sperr as particularly significant.

She took part in various theater and cabaret projects, and in 1977 she founded her own cabaret group called "Opera Curiosa". With that group she gave guest performances in Berlin and Hamburg as well as at the Bavarian State Theater. Over the years, the group had a total of 180 members: "Actors from theater, opera and revue were joined by artists, backyard singers, transvestites and citizens who had never stood on stage before," Sägebrecht said in retrospect, "My great need to unite all these people in a melting pot - tolerance for each other, joy of acting, courage for individuality, breaking one's vanity - found great love with the audience. I myself was 'Frau Direktör', 'Biene Maja', 'Miss Piggi'. (...) Many [performers from back then] are well known today, like Konstantin Wecker or Nina Hagen". Sägebrecht's manifold activities in the Munich scene soon earned her the name "Mother of Subculture".

When she appeared on stage as the whore Bella in Martin Sperr's "Adele Spitzeder" at the Munich studio theater in 1979, director Percy Adlon took notice. He promptly hired her as a still photographer and in a supporting role as Mrs. Sanchez for his Bavarian Don Quixote film "Herr Kischott" (1980, TV). Sägebrecht also played her first film role under Adlon's direction, with a supporting turn in the Bavarian family chronicle "Die Schaukel" ("The Swing", 1983).

Nevertheless, Sägebrecht remained committed to stage work. In 1982 she received the Schwabing Art Prize for the "Opera Curiosa"; in 1983/84 she organized theatre meetings at the Fraunhofer Theater in Munich. In 1984 she was awarded the Ernst Hoferichter Prize.

After further supporting roles in cinema, for example as a teen-magazine reporter in the satire "Im Himmel ist die Hölle los" (1984), Sägebrecht achieved her breakthrough on the big screen in Percy Adlon's melancholic comedy "Zuckerbaby" ("Sugarbaby"): For her leading role as a lonely Munich gravedigger who wants to conquer the heart of a subway driver (Eisi Gulp), she won the Ernst Lubitsch Prize and was nominated for the German Film Prize.

An even greater success was "Out of Rosenheim" (1987), also directed by Percy Adlon. In that film she played a down-to-earth Bavarian woman who leaves her husband while on vacation in the USA; dressed in a loden costume and traditional hat, she ends up in a Californian desert town, where she makes good friends with a Black woman who is initially hostile towards the obviously foreign and strange-looking German. The film received glowing reviews and various international awards; under the title "Bagdad Café" it was also an international box office success and became a cult film (especially in France). Sägebrecht won the German Film Prize for this achievement.

The international success of "Out of Rosenheim" brought Marianne Sägebrecht supporting roles in several Hollywood productions: in 1988 she was seen as a beautician in the political satire "Moon Over Parador" (directed by Paul Mazursky) alongside Richard Dreyfuss; in the highly successful comedy "The War of the Roses"(1989) she played the housekeeper of the warring couple Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

The German-American co-production "Rosalie Goes Shopping" (1989) was the fifth and last collaboration with Percy Adlon. The quirky comedy, tailored entirely to Sägebrecht, is about a German woman, living in small town America, who satisfies her consumerism, driven by non-stop advertising, with all kinds of scams. Once again, Sägebrecht played a woman who wins over the audience with her disarming naivety and her slyness. The film was invited into the competition of the Cannes Film Festival, where it celebrated its world premiere in May 1989.

In the following years, Sägebrecht was seen in a large number of very different films, including several international productions. For the title role in "Martha und ich" ("Martha and I", DE/FR 1990), as the housekeeper of a Jewish family in Nazi Prague (with Michel Piccoli as the father), she was awarded acting prizes at the Venice and Seattle Film Festivals; she also received a nomination for the German Film Prize.

Her other parts include a small appearance as a doctor in the horror film "Dust Devil" (SA/GB 1992) and a leading role as the rich, unloved wife of Uwe Ochsenknecht in the German-American comedy "Ein fast perfektes Verhältnis" ("Mona Must Die", 1994). As the head of an educational institution, she belonged to the ensemble of Volker Schlöndorff's "Der Unhold" ("The Ogre", 1996); she played a leading role as a concentration camp survivor in the Jewish family story "Left Luggage" (BE/NL 1998) and was the wife of the village chief Majestix, in "Asterix & Obelix gegen Caesar" ("Asterix and Obelix Take on Caesar", FR/DE/IT 1999).

From the end of the nineties on, Sägebrecht worked almost exclusively in television productions. Matti Geschonneck cast her in the social drama "Ganz unten, ganz oben" (1999) as a good-natured bank employee who, after several strokes of fate, is threatened with homelessness. From 2001 to 2004 she took on the title role of an energetic cook in the three-part television drama series "Marga Engel", for which she also worked on the script. In "Das Geheimnis meiner Schwester" (2007) she was the loving and resolute operator of an animal shelter; director Bodo Fürneisen cast her in the title role of the fairy tale adaptation "Frau Holle" (2008). In the romantic culture clash comedy "So ein Schlamassel" (2009) Sägebrecht played the aunt of a young man who falls in love with a Jewish woman from a very traditional family. Xaver Schwarzenberger cast her in the historical drama "Die Verführerin Adele Spitzeder" ("A Deal with Adele", 2011) in a guest role as a pub owner.

From 2012 on, Marianne Sägebrecht was seen more often in cinema roles again. Tomy Wigand's much-praised comedy "Omamamia" (2012), based on a true story, showed her as a sprightly grandmother trying to get a private audience with the Pope in Rome. In the award-winning Swiss docudrama "Der Kreis" ("The Circle", 2014), about the gay movement in Zurich in the prudish 1950s, she was the loving mother of activist Ernst Ostertag.

Also in 2014 she played the helpful neighbor Beda Andersson in the partially animated children's film "Pettersson & Findus - Kleiner Quälgeist, große Freundschaft" ("Pettson & Findus: A Little Nuisance, a Great Friendship"). She also took on this role in the two sequels, "Pettersson & Findus II - Das schönste Weihnachten überhaupt" ("Pettson & Findus II - The Most Beautiful Christmas ever", 2016) and "Pettersson and Findus - Findus zieht um" (Pettson and Findus – Findus Moves House, 2018). At the same time, in 2016/2017, she played a police informant in several episodes of the crime thriller series "SOKO München".

Sägebrecht had a tailor-made movie role in the low-budget comedy "Schmucklos" (2019), as the ghost of a deceased Munich pub owner whose clueless grandson takes over her bar. In the summer of 2019 she took the stage at the Bad Hersfeld Festival in a version of Kafka's "Der Prozess" (The Trial), playing the faithful housekeeper of Josef K.

Marianne Sägebrecht lives in Bernried on Lake Starnberg.

Filmography

2022/2023
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2017-2019
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2019
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2017/2018
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2017/2018
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2011/2012
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2008
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1997/1998
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1996/1997
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  • Story
1997
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1994/1995
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1995/1996
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1992/1993
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1992/1993
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1989/1990
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1986/1987
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1984/1985
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1983
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