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Michaela Caspar, born on April 6, 1960 in Weil am Rhein, Germany, grew up in South Baden, Germany, and from the age of five in Berlin, where she studied photography at the Lette-Verein after graduating from high school. In the early 1980s, she began producing multimedia shows and working as a photojournalist. Together with Ulrich Sauerwein and Trolly Trojahn she founded the multimedia collective AvF Berlin.
From 1984 to 1987 Caspar studied acting with Else Bessler-Reuß at the Schillertheater Berlin. After graduating, she performed at the Stadttheater Regensburg (1989-92), the Staatliche Bühnen Salzburg (1990), the Kleist-Theater Frankfurt/Oder (1992-94) and the Staatstheater Cottbus (1993). At the same time, she attended several workshops with Jack Garfein of the Actor's Studio New York (1988-90), took singing lessons at the Theater des Westens Berlin (1990-92) and studied singing at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (1993-95).
Over the years, Caspar has performed at Berlin's Kammerspiele, Hebbeltheater, and Schlossparktheater; she has also appeared in contemporary opera productions, including with the ensemble of the Komische Oper Berlin. Among the authors and directors with whom she worked in the 1990s were Till Nikolaus von Heiseler, Bernd Michael Lade, Rudolf Koloc, Rolf Hochhuth and Rosa von Praunheim. In some cases, Caspar also worked as a producer on the projects.
At the end of the 1990s, Michaela Caspar also began to appear in productions for television and the big screen. First and foremost, she took on smaller and larger guest roles in numerous series and serials, such as "Polizeiruf 110", "Tatort", "Doppelter Einsatz", "Stromberg" and "Bella Block". In "Erntedank. Ein Allgäu-Krimi" (2009) she played the wife of investigator Kluftinger, in the "Tatort" crime thriller "Preis des Lebens" (2015) she was a mother who kidnapped her daughter's rapist. For Roland Suso Richter, she took on a leading role in the crime thriller "Ein todsicherer Plan" (2014, TV) as a bank employee whose branch becomes the scene of a hostage situation. For Raymond Ley, she played the mother of the right-wing terrorist Beate Zschäpe in the TV docudrama "Letzte Ausfahrt Gera - Acht Stunden mit Beate Zschäpe" (2016).
In 2008, together with writer Till Nikolaus von Heiseler and after suffering a hearing loss during rehearsals for a musical theater piece, Caspar founded Possible World e.V., an association that focuses on bringing together deaf, hard of hearing and hearing people from different countries to work together on performative formats. In this context, she developed the play "Frühling Erwache!" after Frank Wedekind and Nuran David Calis, which premiered in 2009 at the Ballhaus Ost in Berlin with an ensemble of three hearing actors and 14 deaf or hard of hearing students from a school for the deaf in Berlin.
On the big screen, Caspar could be seen in the ensemble of the social drama "Abgebrannt" ("Burnout", 2011), as the whimsical Marguerite in Wes Anderson's "Grand Budapest Hotel" (DE/US 2014) and as the mother of a missing beauty queen in the award-winning crime thriller "Trash Detective" (2015). However, her main field of activity remained television, with regular supporting roles in the series "8 Tage" ("8 Days", 2018), "Germany 86" (2018) and "Legal Affairs" (2020), as well as various guest roles in other series.
In the children's film "Die Schule der magischen Tiere 2" ("The School of Magical Animals 2", 2022), Caspar played a school counselor, and in the drama "153 Meters" ("502 Feet", 2022), she played a lonely janitor who imagines an intimate relationship with a young neighbor, played by her daughter Emilia von Heiseler. The film was directed by her son (and Emilia's twin brother) Anton von Heiseler.