Karoline Herfurth

Initially, it was more of a coincidence than by design that  Karoline Herfurth came to the world of acting.

The East Berlin teenager was playing in a children’s dance theatre group when she was spotted by a talent scout for a part in an episode of the ZDF children’s series called "Achterbahn – Filme über Freunde heute".

"It was like a big adventure, but my parents decided that that was enough and I should continue with school – and, in any case, I was too young," the now 26-year-old Karoline recalls.

And so her thespian talents might have had only one airing in this children’s TV series if she hadn’t been approached – again, by coincidence – at the age of 15 in the school playground. This time by Franziska Schlattner, who is herself now an actress but was working at the time for casting agent Nessie Nesslauer, looking for girls for Hans-Christian Schmid’s "Crazy".

After working on this film which was released in German cinemas in 2000, Karoline signed up with Inka Stelljes’ agency, with whom she remains to this day.

"The more films I made and the older I got, people advised me to get a formal training in this profession," Karoline continues. She applied to various drama schools, but was pleased when an acceptance letter came from Berlin’s revered Ernst Busch "because I would not have wanted to leave home at that stage when I was only nineteen."

"One of the deciding factors behind me going to drama school was after having seen Emilia Galotti with Nina Hoss as Countess Orsina," she says. "I was so overwhelmed by her performance at the time that I wanted to be able to be on the stage and have the courage and ability to do what she did. When we worked together on 'Wir sind die Nacht' ('We Are the Night'), I could at last tell her how important she had been for me."

Looking back on her studies at Ernst Busch she says that the training was a good preparation for her later work. "It gave me the basis and the ability to develop my craft," she explains. "I had purposely followed a course with an emphasis on stage acting because I wanted to appear on the stage."

"There are, of course, distinctions to be made between working for the stage or for film, but the training at Ernst Busch was in essence about how one approaches a role, develops language and subtexts and can grasp thoughts."

Whilst still at Ernst Busch she appeared in a production of Russian film and theater director Ivan Vyrypaev’s  "Oxygen" and was engaged after completing her studies for a staging of Ferenc Molnar’s  "Liliom" at the Deutsches Nationatheater in Weimar.

"I would like to have done more theater," Karoline admits, "but it has been difficult to coordinate theater and film commitments. However, I hope a chance will come along sometime in the future."

In just over a decade since her film acting debut in "Crazy", Karoline has taken roles in films as diverse as the teenage comedies "Mädchen Mädchen" ("Girls on Top") and the feel-good comedy "Vincent will Meer" ("Vincent Wants to Sea") through such dramas as "Eine andere Liga" ("Offside") and "Im Winter ein Jahr" ("A Year Ago in Winter") to the vampire film "Wir sind die Nacht".

"The most important thing for me when deciding on a part is for it to be in some way or another a challenge," she explains. "It can be the period when the film is set that interests me or the character itself; it could be the subject matter or the collaboration with certain colleagues or a certain director. Again, my choice may be decided by the genre."

Kaspar Heidelbach’s "Berlin '36" – based on a true story involving Gretel Bergmann, the leading female high jumper of her time, in the run-up to the 1936 Olympic Games – was a particular challenge for Karoline on various levels. She had a training program in order to be convincing as an athlete, but also set herself the personal challenge of being as close as possible to the real Gretel Bergmann in her characterization.

"I had the biography which Gretel had written, so I could read up about how she had felt and thought at certain points when I came to play the scenes. That was a perfect situation," she recalls. "It depends with each film how much research you have to do, but some productions provide you with lots of background material. Each character has its own set of issues which you take in: in 'Vincent will Meer', Marie has anorexia nervosa, while Lilli in 'Im Winter ein Jahr' has the subject of the death of a sibling."

Moreover, the young actress has made her first forays into international productions with roles in Tom Tykwer’s adaptation of Patrick Süskind’s bestselling novel "Das Parfum – Die Geschichte eines Mörders" ("Perfume – The Story of a Murderer") and Stephen Daldry’s take on another German bestseller, Bernhard Schlink’s "Der Vorleser" ("The Reader").

This spring saw Karoline take one of the leads in Australian filmmaker Eron Sheean’s gentech thriller "Errors of the Human Body" opposite Michael Eklund ("The Divide").

"Working with this director appealed to me as did the story and the character," Karoline says. "And I liked the challenge of playing in English. It’s definitely a different situation when you are performing in your mother tongue than acting in a foreign language. In any case, being an actor means that you have to think on two planes: thinking within the figure and the specific situation and, at the same time, blotting out everything happening around you. And then you have a third level coming in if you are acting in English."

While some of her actor colleagues are among the "usual suspects" turning up regularly at premieres or in the gossip columns of the yellow press, Karoline shies away from the full glare of the razzamatazz surrounding the life of a film star.

She accepts that glamour and stardom is "part and parcel of the job, but I would put it at around 10%-20%. It is important for me that this public side has its limits because I am not someone who likes being featured a lot in the media. However, it’s alright when I can speak about a film or a character or my work."

In fact, she currently manages to combine following her career as an actress with attending courses in Political Science and Sociology at Berlin’s Humboldt University.

"It’s a bit frustrating at times that I don’t have so much time because I really love my studies," she says. "There is a lot of reading and digesting information, but everything I wished for from this studying has been fulfilled 100%. It’s inspiring to go to a place where people are meeting to learn something and others are passing on their knowledge."

Author: Martin Blaney