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Barbara Sukowa (born 2 February 1950 in Bremen, Germany) is a German theatre and film actress.

Sukowa`s stage debut was in Berlin in 1971, in a production of Peter Handke`s Der Ritt über den Bodensee. Günter Beelitz invited her to join the ensemble of the Darmstädt National Theatre in the same year. She also worked in Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg, in collaboration with directors such as Luc Bondy and Ivan Nagel. Her roles included Marion in Büchner`s Danton`s Death and Helena in A Midsummer Night`s Dream. Other Shakespeare roles in Europe were Rosalind in As You Like It and Desdemona in Othello. Sukowa also performed in Ibsen`s The Master Builder. In English, she has worked in a production of The Cherry Orchard (Princeton, New Jersey, 2000).

In addition to her stage work, Sukowa is well known for her performances in films from the New German Cinema. She portrayed Mieze in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), which earned her the German best young actress award. Her performance of the title role in Fassbinder’s Lola earned her a German Film Awards (Gold) award. Her performance in Margarethe von Trotta’s film Die bleierne Zeit (1981) earned her a best actress award at the Venice Film Festival. She received best actress honours at the Cannes Film Festival for her work in von Trotta`s film Rosa Luxemburg (1986).

Sukowa has also developed a further career as a classical music narrator and speaker. She has performed the speaker`s role in Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire, first with the Schoenberg Ensemble under Reinbert de Leeuw. Other performances have been with ensembles in Paris, London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo, Salzburg, Los Angeles, and New York City. She has performed the Speaker`s role in Schönberg`s Gurrelieder with the Berlin Philharmonic and Claudio Abbado, and is the Speaker on the recording with Abbado and the Vienna Philharmonic. She narrated Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf both in concert and on record, as well as a recording of Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She has performed in Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera. She performed the speaking role in the US premiere of Michael Jarrell`s Cassandre in March 2006, and in the New York City premiere that month, with musicians from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

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