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Gertrud Drassl was born on April 13, 1978, in Eppan, South Tyrol (Italy). After finishing secondary school, she initially studied art history in Vienna before successfully auditioning in 1998 for the acting program at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. Just one year later, she made her stage debut at the Stadttheater Bozen, playing Juliet in "Romeo und Juliet."
After graduating in 2002, she was immediately invited to join the ensemble of Vienna's Theater in der Josefstadt, where she remained a member until 2017. In 2003, she received the Nestroy Theatre Award for Best Young Actress for her performance in "The Wild Duck." Among the many roles she played in the following years were Laura in "The Glass Menagerie" (2005), Barblin in "Andorra," and Elisabeth in "Faith, Hope and Charity" (2008, at Theater Dortmund).
Alongside her stage work, Drassl also began working in film and television early in her career. For her role in the historical father–son drama "Mein Vater, meine Frau und meine Geliebte" ("My Father, My Wife and My Beloved", AT 2004), she won the 2005 Undine Award for Best Young Actress in a TV Film. She also received a Romy Award in the category Most Popular Female Shooting Star. In 2006, Drassl earned a second Undine Award—again for Best Young Actress—for her portrayal of the girlfriend of a gambling addict in "Spiele Leben" ("You Bet Your Life").
At the Günter Rohrbach Film Award in 2012, she received the Mayor's Special Prize for her role as the mother of a dying child in the medical drama "Das Wunder von Kärnten" ("A Day for a Miracle," DE/AT 2011, TV). For this performance, as well as for her part in the crime drama "Spuren des Bösen: Das Verhör" ("Anatomy of Evil," DE/AT 2012), she was honored with the German Acting Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the acclaimed psychological thriller "Ma Folie" ("My Madness. Your Love. Your Lies." AT 2015), she played the best friend of a woman slipping into paranoia—a performance that earned her the Austrian Film Award.
She went on to play major film roles in "Elser" ("13 Minutes," 2015) and "Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank" ("The Diary of Anne Frank," 2016), appearing as Miep Gies, the helper of the Frank family who later saved Anne's now-famous diary after the family's arrest.
From 2015 to 2018—and again in 2022 (Season 6)—Drassl held a leading role in the Austrian TV series "Vorstadtweiber." For this role, she received another German Acting Award in 2017, this time as Best Actress in a Comedy.
In 2017, Drassl left the ensemble of Theater in der Josefstadt and shifted her focus almost entirely to screen acting. On the big screen, she appeared as a teacher in "Hexe Lilli rettet Weihnachten" ("Lilly's Bewitched Christmas," 2017), as a Romani woman in the historical drama "Rotzbub" ("Welcome to Siegheilkirchen," 2021), and as the mother of the protagonist in the Tyrolean farming drama "Märzengrund" ("Above the World", AT/DE 2022). She took on a leading role in "Persona Non Grata" (AT/IT 2024) by Antonin Svoboda, a #MeToo drama based on the real-life story of former ski racer Nicola Werdenigg. She was also seen in a leading role in "Welcome Home Baby" (2025), a psychological thriller about a woman confronting the demons of her past during a trip through Austria.