Actress' Portrait:

While Johanna Wokalek didn't get a headstart by hailing from an acting family like some of her fellow thespians, she still caught the acting bug from an early age.

»We had a drama group at school and I always took every opportunity to play on the stage,« the 30-year-old actress recalls. After taking her final examinations, she was keen to take off from her home town of Freiburg in the south-west corner of Germany and had her sights focused on Vienna as the place to pursue an acting career.

An application for admission at the famous Max Reinhardt Seminar succeeded at the first go and she moved to the Austrian capital in 1995.

»The good thing about Max Reinhardt was that they supported us in taking acting roles if you had the opportunity to play,« Johanna explains. »You didn't just have to stay in the school and attend lessons. After all, acting isn't something you can only learn at school, it is also about trying things out.«

Thus, during her studies, she began her film career with the role of Ilse opposite Maria Schrader and Juliane Koehler in Max Faerberboeck's drama Aimée & Jaguar which was shown at the Berlinale in 1998, and made her first appearance on the stage during the 1996 Wiener Festwochen with Paulus Manker's production of Alma - A Show Biz ans Ende (he later directed a TV film adaptation of the play with Johanna reprising her role).

Then, in the last year of her course, Johanna received an engagement for three years to be part of the acting company at the Schauspiel Bonn where she had roles in David Mouchtar-Samorai's Ein Monat auf dem Lande as well as in Valentin Jeker's staging of Gerhart Hauptmann's Rose Bernd. This latter production was taken to the Theatertreffen in Berlin where her portrayal of the title heroine earned her the epithet of Newcomer Actress of the Year 1999 as well as the Alfred Kerr Acting Prize and the North Rhine-Westphalian Theater Prize.

Afterwards, she returned to Vienna and became a permanent member of the acting company at the city's legendary Burgtheater where she has stayed until this day.

»I have had the great opportunity to work with different kinds of people in the theater; really exciting and markedly different personalities like Peter Zadek, Luc Bondy and Andrea Breth,« she says. »In my cinema work, there hasn't been any continuity of working with a particular director, although I think one can see a special quality in the situation where an actor regularly works with the same director.«

She explains that her experiences on her three last productions »were each completely different, but very exciting« since Hans Steinbichler was making his feature debut with the family drama Hierankl, which also starred Barbara Sukowa, Peter Simonischek and Josef Bierbichler; Queen of Cherries's Rainer Kaufmann could now be regarded as one of the established figures of the new German cinema; and Til Schweiger brought the actor's sensibility to his other roles as the director, co-writer and producer of Barefoot.

»With Hans, it was great that he had written the screenplay himself,« Johanna recalls. »At the same time, he is a bit of a seducer; he phoned Barbara up in New York to convince her on the phone to come and take the role. We had an exciting time although the story was quite tough and a real challenge.«

»In the case of Rainer, it was very nice that I was able to meet him every day in Munich 2-3 weeks before the shooting started so that we could go through the whole role. We tried to work over all three scripts, partly changed some scenes around and thought up new things. It was an exhilarating experience to be there from very early on, to be involved in the development and then to start the shoot. It was particularly important in this three-parter to have the time to chart the life of this woman Ruth, to have the feeling that one knew the course her life had taken.«

»Then again, it was very special with Til because he is an actor and it was quite funny how he moved from working as an actor to being a director. There was a constant overlapping,« she notes.

Meanwhile, she doesn't see any problem about moving between working for the stage and in films: »When I have been doing lots of theater, I am always looking forward to shooting again, and when I have been working on a film, I am then keen to get back to the stage. I find the mixture extremely fascinating: with the theater, it is about working with the texts and having a long time to find oneself. On a film shoot, you have this concentration on the moment and of course there is the closeness to the camera, I really love this intimate form of collaboration.«

When deciding on which film roles to accept, she explains that she relies on »my first feeling for the story, whether it really interests me. That is the decisive factor. And then, naturally, there is the constellation of who else is cast, whether this all fits with the story. I must really want to play the role. With films, you have to do a lot of waiting, so it's nice if you want to wait!«

In her short career to date, Johanna has been the lucky recipient of some of the leading distinctions in the German speaking theater and film worlds, but awards are not the be-all of her wanting to pursue a life as an actress. »I am naturally pleased to get them and to know that other people see and value my work,« she says. »The nicest reward for me as an actress are the spectators I was able to reach or move with my part.«

Similarly, she is wary of the label of a star, arguing that »the concept has become hackneyed because everything is so shortlived. People are constantly talking about stars, stars, stars that I often think one should perhaps invent a new definition. But my impetus for this profession is simply that I just have to act. The other things are nice, but not the most important.«

Nevertheless, Johanna will be in the limelight when she represents Germany at this year's Shooting Stars showcase of Europe's young acting talent at the Berlinale - and she is enthusiastically looking forward to the experience! »I think it's a great idea to meet up with colleagues from other countries and hear about their careers. I always welcome everything that expands one's view of other countries and languages and encourages an exchange,« she says and points out that she could imagine taking roles in the future which would require her to speak in English or French.