Supposedly a diva

“I’m just an actress who works. That’s all there is to it!” This is how she sees herself and how she would like others to see her. It is part of her job to play a wide range of different characters and this is just what she aspires to. And she is very good at it: whether as a sensational shooting star in Bernd Eichinger’s film “The Girl Rosemary”, on stage as Franziska in Barbara Frey’s production of “Minna von Barnhelm”, as the zombie-like Helena in “Faust II”, as Countess Orsina in “Emilia Galotti” – the personification of ice-cold eroticism and exploding passion – or in the title role of “Medea” wielding hugely expressive powers: she gives over 100 percent to every part she plays.

 

Her regular workplace is the Deutsches Theater. In “Yella” – her third film with Christian Petzold after “Toter Mann” and “Wolfsburg” – she moves through the world of venture capital with frosty calculation like an angel of death. She received the Berlinale Bear for Best Actress in 2007, as well as the German Film Award in gold for best actress in a leading role – also for “Yella”. However, although Nina Hoss might appear to be a diva in some roles and at award ceremonies, she is in reality a very modest person. Apart from the fact that she is said to be wild behind the wheel of car and is a risk to the general public on the road, she likes to go unnoticed and undisturbed in her private life. When someone once said to here that he had never met an actress like her, who everyone knows but nobody recognizes, it was an enormous compliment as far as she was concerned. And she likes to always be positive in the here and now: “Just because you’re doing well, you shouldn’t think that something bad is bound to soon happen.”

Born in 1975 in Stuttgart, she grew up there, learning from her parents that one must assert oneself and not be timid. When she was discovered by Bernd Eichinger at acting school and received the chance to play her first role as Rosemary, she was still intending to become an opera singer. It was Maria Callas’ philosophy of giving 150 percent that had caught her imagination, and she had started taking lessons at the tender age of 14. She fully embodies one of her father’s values: “A girl should be able to catch a ball” – something she is very much able to do. She is also prepared to stand up to anything that comes her way, both in the roles she plays and in life itself. As a special ambassador to the Brazilian state of Para, she is carrying on an initiative started by her deceased father, Willi Hoss, who started his rain forest project “Poema” to combat poverty and protect the environment in the Amazon.