Christine Kaufmann

Biography

Christine Kaufmann was an Austrian-born German actress who also wrote books and built a cosmetics business. Raised in Munich, she trained as a ballerina with the Munich Opera before her screen debut at seven in The White Horse Inn (1952). She played the lead in Der schweigende Engel that year and drew wider notice with Rose-Girl Resli in 1954. Fame followed with The Last Days of Pompeii (1959), opposite Steve Reeves, and Town Without Pity (1961), with Kirk Douglas, earning her a Golden Globe as New Star of the Year; she was the first German so honored. She appeared in Taras Bulba (1962) and Escape from East Berlin. She returned in Werner Fassbinder's Lili Marleen (1981) and Lola (1981), worked with the director Helmut Dietl on the satire series Monaco Franze, and took the role of a glamorous tattoo artist in Bagdad Cafe in 1987. Her final screen part was Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (2014).