Nadja Uhl

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Nadja Uhl
13 Diva2008-2.JPG
Uhl in 2008
Born (1972-05-23) 23 May 1972 (age 51)
EducationUniversity of Music and Theatre Leipzig
Occupation(s)Actress, model
Height5' 6¼" (1,68 m)
SpouseKay Bockhold
ChildrenPaulina Eva Mia Theiva Uhl, Elena Ida Elisabeth Uhl
AwardsCherry Blossoms (2009)

The Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008) Twin Sisters (2005)

The Legend of Rita (2001)

Contents

One day the leader of the drama group that she attended after school each Monday asked Nadja Uhl if she had ever considered making acting her profession. Suddenly new possibilities opened up and with them a legitimation for the future:

"I might be permitted to grow up and yet somehow remain a child .... depending"
"Ich durfte erwachsen werden und trotzdem irgendwie Kind bleiben – je nachdem."
Nadja Uhl, interviewed by Katja Hübner in 2008 [1]

Nadja Uhl (German: [ˈnadjaːuːl] ; born 23 May 1972, in Stralsund [2] [3] ) is a German actress.

Uhl grew up near Stralsund, in the town of Franzburg. She lived with her mother in a three-generation house, shared with aunts and her grandparents, who had moved in shortly after the war. Her father left the family home when she was two; she never got to know him. [2] Many years later, after setting up her own multi-generation multi-family house in Potsdam in 2005, with friends and relations ranging in age from 20 to 90, [2] she told an interviewer that childhood experience of living with aunts and grandparents taught her that this type of extended family community in a single home was a challenge which could only succeed if each member was allowed some free space. [1]

At school, Uhl tried shooting, ballet, table tennis, and gymnastics. A perceptive school report noted that "Nadja likes to be part of a group". An art teacher spotted her talent for entertaining others and arranged for her to take part in a weekly amateur drama group after school each Monday. That became a weekly highlight. [1]

Uhl studied at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy College of Music and Theatre in Leipzig between 1990 and 1994, beginning her career as a theatre actress at the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam in 1994. [2] There, she opened a music hall with her partner (and business manager) Kay Bockhold in 2006.

Uhl first appeared in a film in 1993 (Thomas Koerfer's Der Grüne Heinrich, playing Agnes' role), but in 2000 she attracted international attention acting in Volker Schlöndorff's The Legend of Rita (Die Stille nach dem Schuß). In this film she played Tatjana, an East German waitress who rebels against the system of her country. Due to her work in this film, she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Deutscher Filmpreis (German Film Awards).

In 2002, Uhl appeared in Twin Sisters (De Tweeling), directed by Dutch director Ben Sombogaart and based on the novel The Twins , a bestseller by Tessa de Loo. Here she played Anna, Lotte's sister. They are separated from each other after the death of their parents; the Second World War and the Holocaust will consolidate their situation. The film was a 76th Academy Awards nominee for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2003.

In 2005, Uhl played the role of Nicole in Summer in Berlin (Sommer vorm Balkon), directed by Andreas Dresen, and was nominated for Best Actress at the German Film Awards.

In 2006, Uhl played Katja Döbbelin in Storm Tide  [ de ], directed by Jorgo Papavassiliou. This successful RTL TV miniseries focused on the North Sea flood of 1962, which left 315 dead.

In 2008, Uhl participated in Uli Edel's Der Baader Meinhof Komplex , based on the bestseller of the same title by Stefan Aust; the film and the book are based on real events. In the film, Uhl plays Brigitte Mohnhaupt, a member of the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion or R.A.F., a German terrorist group of Marxist ideology active from the late 1960s to 1998), and leader of its second generation. Also in 2008, Uhl participated in a TV production, also based on real events, about the Lufthansa Flight 181 hijacking (during the German Autumn of 1977), which was perpetrated by four terrorists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in collusion with the R.A.F. Here, Nadja Uhl plays flight attendant Gabriele Dillmann, who was one of the victims of the hijacking. Coincidentally, at the time of the hijacking, the R.A.F.'s leader was Brigitte Mohnhaupt. In the film Mogadischu she plays a flight attendant aboard hijacked Flight LH181. [1]

In 2017, uhl told an interviewer that she still loves the land of her birth, the German Democratic Republik (GDR) "in spite of everything ... that happened with my family". [4] Although the family in which she grew up was not particularly politicised during her early childhood, they were forced to confront an uglier side of the socialist paradise when her uncle was arrested during the later 1980s and imprisoned at Bautzen in connection with his "environmental activism which at that time was not welcome [to the authorities] in the GDR ... [Those activists] did nothing wrong. They just pointed out the abuses. That alone was enough to be seen as an attack on the system." [4]

Uhl has two daughters, born in 2006 and in 2009. [3] [5]

Filmography and roles

Related Research Articles

The German Autumn was a series of events in Germany in 1977 associated with the kidnapping and murder of industrialist, businessman, and former Schutzstaffel member Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) and the Federation of German Industries (BDI), by the Red Army Faction (RAF), a far-left militant organisation, and the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The hijackers demanded the release of ten RAF members detained at the Stammheim Prison plus two Palestinian compatriots held in Turkey and US$15 million in exchange for the hostages. The assassination on 7 April 1977 of Siegfried Buback, the attorney-general of West Germany, and the failed kidnapping and murder of the banker Jürgen Ponto on 30 July 1977, marked the beginning of the German Autumn. It ended on 18 October, with the liberation of the Landshut, the deaths of the leading figures of the first generation of the RAF in their prison cells, and Schleyer's death.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Katja Hübner (24 November 2008). "Schauspielerin Nadja Uhl: Die Frau mit dem extremen Etwas". Der Tagesspiegel.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Anja Bölck. "Nadja Uhl". kultur-mv.de. Kulturportal MV. Retrieved 20 July 2018.
  3. 1 2 "Nadja Uhl". gala.de. G+J Medien. Retrieved 20 July 2018.
  4. 1 2 Louis Lewitan (23 February 2017). "Nadja Uhl: Ich liebe meine Heimat, die DDR, trotz allem". Vol. 2017, no. 6. ZEITmagazin.
  5. "Nadja Uhl: Ihre zweite Tochter ist auf der Welt". BUNTE Entertainment. 1 October 2009.