Cult figure of German film: Marianne Säbrecht is 80 years old

Marianne Säbrecht has participated in over 80 film and television productions – and thus established himself as one of the most striking German actresses. She celebrates her 80th birthday on August 27th. She found her way in front of the camera at the end of the 1970s when film director Percy Adlon (1935-2024) discovered her talent.

The girl from Starnberg, who had done an apprenticeship as a medical-technical assistant after school and worked for a neurologist and psychiatrist, was inspired by the desire to become an actress.

She had taken responsibility early, married at 19 and got a daughter. For four years she led the Starnberg cabaret “Spinnradl” with her husband and sister, then the divorce came to Munich.

Again she dived into the cabaret scene, became the landlady of the legendary Schwabingen artist pub “Mutti Bräu”, where they all went and out, the people of the film and theater, including those from the Roncalli circus. And Marianne Säbrecht right in the middle of it.

It was only a matter of time when she would be on stage herself, and since her energy is always at least as big as her dedication, she founded the cabaret revuetheater Opera Curiosa and also played theater, without acting training, learning by doing.

Her Percy Adlon met there. He sees this open face, sees her burning and committed to his film “Mr. Kischott” (1979). The beginning is made.

A short time later, Marianne Säbrecht also appears under the pseudonym Barbara Hermani as a ring fighter in the flat erotic-Klamauk “Some Make plump”, but you can also make a mistake. A certain Chris Lemmon (71) also plays there, and he is the son of the Hollywood star and Oscar winner Jack Lemmon (1925-2001). So ticked off! Percy Adlon is again the director at the next film “Die Schaukel” (1983).

In the same year, the dead trousers shoot their first music video “ice -cooled bommerlunder”. They also discovered Marianne Säbrecht in the Munich cabaret scene. A punk wedding is presented in the “Bommerlunder” video, the Catholic pastor plays Fassbinder star Kurt Raab (1941-1988), the bride is Marianne Säbrecht. The wedding party drinks and sings in the church with the band “Ice -cooled Bommerlunder, Bommerlunder ice -cooled”, shot in the Upper Bavarian Church of St. Willibald in Jesenwang near Fürstenfeldbruck.

The video becomes the milestone of German punk history, also because the church and public television see the appearance as a scandal. ARD and ZDF refuse to send the clip due to alleged “obscene hints”, St. Willibald is even newly consecrated afterwards – and “ice -cooled bommerlunder” with Marianne Säbrecht gets cult status that continues to this day.

Since she has not yet shot her “main works”, but Percy Adlon already has it in the planning. This time he won her as the main actress, 1985 for the film comedy “Zuckerbaby”, 1987 for “Out of Rosenheim”.

In “Zuckerbaby” she plays a graved tombs who so loves to hear “Sugar Baby” by Peter Kraus and falls in love with the voice of a Munich subway driver (Eisi Gulp). Marianne Säbrecht is already 40 “and, according to the view, old and uniform” (). Nevertheless, she conquered the much slimmer and younger man who is also married.

“Out of Rosenheim” becomes Percy Adlon’s most successful film, which not only goes well in Germany, but also in the US program cinemas. Marianne Säbrecht embodies Jasmin Münchgstettner, “an angel with a Bavarian baroque body scope and traditional hat” (“Süddeutsche Zeitung”). She says bike bridges that she would come “Out of Rosenheim” instead of “From Rosenheim” and brings momentum into the dreary Cafe Baghdad in the California Mojave desert. This time she falls in love with the Hollywood star Jack Palance (1919-2006).

The two Adlon films (did not follow the third: “Rosalie Goes Shopping”) made a brand out of actress Marianne Säbrecht. It is probably the other way around: Marianne’s character shapes the actress of success, enchanting the audience with an irresistible humanity. Does Marianne Säbrecht always play himself?

No matter how: Mrs. Säbrecht is suddenly an international star, the American star photographer Annie Leibovitz (75) photographs her as a Bavarian Venus in the Alpsee near Hohenschwangau.

She plays alongside Michael Douglas (80) and Kathleen Turner (71) in “The Rose War” (1989), with Michel Piccoli (1925-2020) in “Martha and I” (1990), with John Malkovich (71) in “Der Blild” (1996), with Gérard Depardieu (76) in “Asterix and Obelix against Caesar” (1999). Woody Allen (89) wants to hire her for his comedy “Shadow and Fog”. She rejects as well as roles in “Harry Potter” and in “End of Days” next to Arnold Schwarzenegger (78).

She says she doesn’t want to gain a foothold in Hollywood, she couldn’t. “My mother lived with me at the time, I wanted to see my granddaughter growing up. I don’t stay in Hollywood. I just assume roles that feel right for me. I have to know who I am. I give my soul in.”

In her home on Lake Starnberg, the self -proclaimed “hiking bear” wrote successful books such as “My survival soups”, “My seasons” and “on the way to Surinam: autobiographical and secret recipes from my magic boiler”. The latter is about a “gardener and shaman”: her grandfather once gave the little Marianne fantastic stories of mango trees, animals and spices. And she has been taking care of dying people in a hospice for years.

She also wants to continue her path as a distinctive actress at 80 and beyond. With a message that is not played, but deeply rooted in it: “My job is probably to spread love among people, convey between nations and religions, create human beings as an actress.”