Passionate Once Again – A portrait of actor Laura Tonke
Acting challenges have been a major part of Laura Tonke's career since the early days. The daughter of a film set designer and an artist was still at school when she made her first film, playing a teenager who flees to the West from East Germany with her mother and ends up in a reception camp in Michael Klier's "Ostkreuz." Later, she appeared in front of the cameras for Tom Tykwer and Dominik Graf, and in "Baader" she played the RAF terrorist Gudrun Ensslin. But when it comes to balancing acts, as the Berliner tells me on an early summer day in her home city, the role in "Amrum" by Fatih Akin has got to be relatively high on the list.
"I thought a lot about how to tackle this role," says Tonke, who plays the mother of the 12-year-old protagonist Nanning in the film – a German woman who idolised Hitler until the very end. "It was important to me to show that it wasn't evil in the classic sense; it was normal people who were totally committed to a murderous ideology. This blindness cost millions of lives and often began with blind obedience rather than violence. I wanted it to be clear how fascism can change and scar people without downplaying the horror of their actions and beliefs. And acting this horror was extremely uncomfortable for me. Especially today, we should never forget how quickly something like that could happen again."
Initially, Tonke recalls that Akin himself was convinced she would turn down the role: "Of course, you won't want to play a Nazi, he said right away at our first meeting, and immediately went into his charming boy mode to try and persuade me. Actually, that wasn't necessary at all, because I was thrilled at the chance to star in a film by Fatih Akin." However, she adds: "The decision was also quite easy for me because National Socialism is a topic I am really interested in, especially the tie-up between then and now. I felt that I could get a message across with this role."
The dynamic with the person behind the camera is crucial for Tonke, and she says that from the very first encounter, her gut feeling tells her whether it will work or not. She is not always right, but she is generally. She describes working with Dominik Graf, after starring in his television film "Bittere Unschuld," as a true milestone. She also says that collaboration with directors Sonja Heiss and Laura Lackmann, with whom she has already made several films, has been like winning the lottery.
In 2016, with Heiss' "Hedi Schneider steckt fest" ("Hedi Schneider is Stuck") and Lackmann's "Mängelexemplar" ("Too Hard to Handle"), Tonke achieved the extraordinary feat of winning the German Film Award for both leading and supporting actress. After several years in which worthwhile cinema projects rarely landed on her desk and she was seen predominantly in television roles, the two films marked a turning point in her career. "Somehow, it felt like I was standing in the shadows at the time," she recalls. "I wanted to escape that – to be seen at least once more. To show one more time what I have to offer as an actor." Besides finding the ideal projects, there was a second reason why Tonke succeeded in starting a whole new chapter in her career. In the years after the birth of her son, when the actor – who has been part of the performance collective Gob Squad for almost 20 years but never attended acting school – had less time than usual to prepare for her roles, she worked with an acting coach for the first time. "That gave me a whole new self-image, a whole new perspective on my profession, and I no longer felt that the director was responsible for me acting well," she says. "Since then, I've not only been prepared for anything; above all, I have been completely open, unbiased and ready to learn new things. I've opened up fresh possibilities and spheres of experience for myself."
Tonke says she is now as passionate about acting as she was as a teenager, but she makes one distinction: "Back then, it was all about the dopamine rush, about pleasing others and impressing the director. Today, I know that I have a job to do and I take responsibility for it myself." Not that she isn't delighted by the attention she received for her work in "Amrum" or in the best-selling film adaptation "22 Bahnen," in which she plays an alcoholic. But the shadows have long since disappeared, and the awards are on the shelf. "Unlike in the past, I no longer feel the need for applause," she says as she leaves. "Seeing what I have achieved is sufficient these days."
Author: Patrick Heidmann