Senta Berger

Early life

Berger is the daughter of musician Josef Berger and teacher Therese Jany. She first appeared on stage at the age of four, when her father accompanied her singing on the piano. At the age of five she started ballet lessons.

Berger also took private acting lessons. In 1957, she won her first small role in one of the final films directed by Austrian auteur Willi Forst. She applied for the Max Reinhardt Seminar, a famous acting school in Vienna, and was accepted, but she left shortly afterwards after accepting a film role without permission. In 1958, she became the youngest member of the Josefstadt Theatre in Vienna.

Career

In 1960 Bernhard Wicki and Artur Brauner produced the film The Good Soldier Schweik with Berger and the German actor Heinz Rühmann. Brauner used Berger in several films, but she soon tired of musicals. In 1962, she went to Hollywood and worked with stars such as Charlton Heston, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Richard Widmark, John Wayne, Jack Kelly, and Yul Brynner. She returned to Germany to accept an offer for a role in a series, which would have brought an obligation of several years.

In 1963, Berger met Michael Verhoeven, son of the German film director Paul Verhoeven (not to be confused with the Dutch Paul Verhoeven). They started their own film production company in 1965. In 1966, Senta and Michael married. In 1970, she starred for the first time in a film produced by her own company and directed by her husband. Other internationally successful films made by the duo included, amongst others, Die weiße Rose, The Nasty Girl (Das schreckliche Mädchen) and Mutters Courage. Berger continued to develop her European career in France and Italy. Also in 1966, the British film Our Man in Marrakesh, called Bang, Bang, You're Dead in the U.S., was released, starring Senta Berger opposite Tony Randall.

In November 1964, she guest starred in an episode of the U.S. television show, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, entitled "The Double Affair". It was later expanded and released in cinemas as the feature film The Spy with My Face (1965). In 1966, Berger co-starred with Kirk Douglas in the film Cast a Giant Shadow. Berger played the role of Magda, a soldier in the Israeli army during the Israeli War of Independence (1948). In The Quiller Memorandum, also released in 1966, she played opposite Max von Sydow and George Segal in the role of a German schoolteacher involved in neo-Nazi activity.

In 1967, Berger acted in the pilot film for the Robert Wagner television series It Takes a Thief, which aired on American television network ABC on 9 January 1968. She reprised her role in the series in October 1969, in an episode in which her character was killed off.

In 1977, she was head of the jury at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. 21 years later, she was part of the jury at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival.

In the 1970s, Photoplay Film Monthly said, "Approaching motherhood, Senta, the one-time militant feminist, has reverted to a docile feminine woman, just like the girl next-door." (Starlet, Kim Holston, 1988, McFarland).

Following the birth of her two sons (including the actor-director Simon Verhoeven), Berger returned to theatre work. She played at the Burgtheater in Vienna, at the Thaliatheater in Hamburg and at the Schillertheater in Berlin. Between 1974 and 1982, she played the “Buhlschaft” in the play Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival with Curd Jürgens and Maximilian Schell. She also acted alongside Schell and James Coburn in a supporting role in the acclaimed war film Cross of Iron (1977). In 1985–86, Berger started a comeback in front of German-speaking audiences in the TV serial Kir Royal. Further serial hits followed, like Die schnelle Gerdi (The Fast Gerti), where she played a taxi driver.

In the same year, she also started a career as a singer of chansons. 2005 saw her in the film, Einmal so wie ich will, as a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage who finds love on holiday, but turns her back on the relationship.

Since February 2003, Berger has been president of the German Film Academy, which seeks to advance the new generation of actors and actresses in Germany and Europe. The Academy will decide the assignment of the German Film Awards in the future.

Memoirs

In the spring of 2006, Berger's autobiography was published in Germany: Ich habe ja gewußt, daß ich fliegen kann ("I Knew That I Could Fly"). Among her memories of Hollywood are a less-than-subtle attempt by Darryl Zanuck to get her on his casting couch, and of all the shallow people she met in Hollywood.

Honours and awards

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