Doris Abeßer, born March 15, 1935, in Berlin, took actor's training already from the age of 16 on. When her application for Staatliche Schauspielschule Berlin-Schönweide was declined because Abeßer had not been full-aged yet, she started to study pedagogics first. But as soon as she turned 18 years old, Abeßer left university to finally attend actor's training at the drama school of Deutsches Theater Berlin.

In 1956, Abeßer made her stage debut at the theatre in Senftenberg. For three years, she performed in a number of plays in Senftenburg before she became a cast member at Dresden's Staatstheater, and then at Berlin's Volksbühne. With films like Frank Beyer's drama "Eine alte Liebe" ("An Old Love", 1959), Heiner Carow's propagandistically tinted "Das Leben beginnt" (1960), Kurt Maetzig's provocative love drama "Septemberliebe" (1961), or Konrad Wolf's masterpiece "Professor Mamlock" (1961), Abeßer became one of the most popular and successful actresses of the GDR – and was furthermore awarded the 1961 "Film darling of the year" by the youth magazine "Neues Leben".

Although she became a cast member of DEFA in 1963, Doris Abeßer's movie career abruptly ended two years later when she starred in the dissident drama "Der Frühling braucht Zeit", that was directed by Günter Stahnke, her husband at the time, and that was banned directly after its premiere. For lack of further movie role offers, Abeßer returned to the theatre. In 1968, she found a new artistic home at Berlin's Metropol Theater and stayed faithful to the theatre until it was closed in 1997. In addition to her work at Monopol Theater, Abeßer also performed in literary and musical programmes during the 1990s. Furthermore, she occasionally returned to the movie screen and, from the 1970s on, regularly appeared in TV series such as "Geschichten übern Gartenzaun" (1982-1985), and in TV movies such as "Mehr als nur Sex" (2002).

Doris Abeßer died January 26 2016.