Nina Franoszek (born 16 March 1963) is a German-American actress[1] and film and theater director. Franoszek was awarded an Adolf Grimme Award for "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series" for her performance in the TV miniseries Sardsch (1998).[2]
Franoszek was born in Berlin, West Germany[3] to the fine artists Sabine Franek and Eduard Franoszek, who was also a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. She graduated from high school (Abitur) in 1981.
Franoszek began working as a dancer, and also posed as a life model for German neo-expressionist painters Rainer Fetting, G.L. Gabriel and Salomé. In 1982 she played roles in two films, (1982) by Thomas Brasch and (English title: Be Gentle Penguin) (1982) by .
Franoszek studied mime and dance in summer seminars at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and enrolled at the Free University of Berlin for Japanese Studies and Ethnology. In 1984 she was an exchange student with the Moscow Art Theater School and the Theater Academy Wachtangow in Leningrad, now: Saint Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy. Franoszek earned a master's degree in Performing Arts (BFA & MFA) from the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover (HMTMH) in 1986,[4] and began to work in regional and national theatre. She was a working finalist of the Actors Studio West in Los Angeles.
Franoszek played a range of roles from tragedy to comedy in over 100 feature films, television movies and series. She played a role in Buster's Bedroom, a comedy directed by Rebecca Horn which earned a German Film Award (1992).[5] She also performed in The Pianist by Roman Polanski, had a leading role in the feature film Martha, and guest starred as Greta in the TV series Mad Men.
Franoszek starred opposite Jiří Menzel in Joint Venture,[6] and also performed in The Party-Nature Morte and in . Kevin Spacey cast her as Patty Duke in Beyond the Sea[7] and she plays the leading role in Visioner directed by Elodie Keene.
She is the first person narrator of Marlene Dietrich in ,[8] [9] a documentary directed by Dietrich's grandson, J. David Riva.
Franoszek played a spy in the action-adventure series Berlin Break, for Columbia/Sony Pictures and RTL Germany. In the Twentieth Century Fox TV series The Loop Franoszek guest starred in her first role in Icelandic-language.
She plays the director of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial in 12 Means I Love You (German title: 12 Heisst Ich Liebe Dich), a sequel to The Lives of Others, which premiered at the Hof International Film Festival 2007.
In 2008 Franoszek made several guest appearances as Greta in Mad Men and in Illeana Douglas's web series Easy to Assemble, and appeared in an episode of the TV series Children's Hospital. Franoszek plays a recurring role in the second season of the award-winning German TV series The Weissensee Saga.
In 2014, Franoszek played the role of Frau Engel in the video game .[10] She once again performed this role in the 2017 sequel, .[11] [12]
Franoszek is a member of Deutsche Filmakademie, Germany's Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, member of the German Directors Guild (BVR), Co–initiator and member of the German Screen Actors Guild (BFFS), member of SAG-AFTRA, member of Villa Aurora Foundation for European American Relation and served as a juror for the International Emmy Awards from 2007 to 2013.
Franoszek is an experienced classical actress. She made her stage debut at the Niedersächsisches Staatstheater Hannover, the national theatre in Hanover, Germany in 1985. She performed a range of roles at various national theaters, including Allisen in Look Back in Anger, Honey in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dunjascha in The Cherry Orchard, to Eve in The Broken Jug by Heinrich von Kleist and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. She also played the lead role in the Russian plays, Time for Love, by Valentin Kataev and The Sarcophagus by Vladimir Gubarev, a play about the Chernobyl disaster.
As a member of the Berlin-based English Theater Group Berlin Play Actors, she played Estelle in the existentialist play No Exit by French writer Jean Paul Sartre.
In 1999, Franoszek made her debut as a theater director at the Pacific Resident Theatre, Los Angeles with two Strindberg plays starring, among others, Orson Bean, Alley Mills and Paula Malcomson. In 2006 she directed her first movie, the courtroom drama "Der große Videoschwindel" (a.k.a. "Spin Doctor"), starring Karoline Eichhorn, Nikki von Tempelhof and Justus von Dohnányi, which premiered in May 2007 and was invited to the International Cannes Film Festival (2007), German Film section.