Franka Potente turns 50: Germany’s coolest Hollywood export

She is the star and centerpiece of one of the biggest German film successes of the past decades, and yet it feels like she has almost disappeared from the scene in the past 15 years. The German Hollywood export Franka Potente (50), who became known worldwide in the late 1990s through Tom Tykwer’s (59) Berlin thriller “Run Lola Run”, was once predicted to have a great film star career. She will turn 50 on July 22, 2024.

After running through the German capital in Doc Martens in search of 100,000 marks, she played alongside Johnny Depp (61) in the cocaine film “Blow” and alongside Matt Damon (53) in the action blockbusters “The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy”. But she never made the big breakthrough in Hollywood – possibly because Potente appeared too nonconformist for the dream factory.

Since her big film career stagnated, the now 50-year-old has appeared in various US TV productions. In Los Angeles, she is also raising two daughters, Polly and Georgie, with her husband Derek Richardson (48).

International film classic “Run Lola Run”

“Run Lola Run” by director Tykwer, with whom Potente was in a relationship for some time after filming, still captivates today as a breathless Berlin film with a pumping soundtrack, a tough heroine with a raver look and formal brilliance. The most successful German film in the USA since Wolfgang Petersen’s (1941-2022) “Das Boot” instantly turned Potente into an international superstar.

She moved to Hollywood but did not submit to the mechanisms and constraints of the dream factory. She publicly criticized Hollywood’s image of women, appeared at film premieres in sneakers, spoiled the death of her character in the second “Bourne” film and, when a journalist asked her about her supposedly overweight backside during the time of “The Bourne Identity”: “The whole world is grateful that Matt Damon was able to fall in love with a woman with my butt.”

Switching to series production and starting a family

At this point, Potente had already achieved everything in Germany, winning the Bambi and German Film Award for “Run Lola Run” and then another German Film Award for Stefan Ruzowitzky’s (62) still worth seeing slasher “Anatomy”. But her big film career came to a halt after “The Bourne Supremacy” in 2004.

In 2006, she shot the Houellebecq adaptation “Elementarteilchen” in Germany for Oskar Roehler (65) with her “Run Lola Run” co-star Moritz Bleibtreu (52) and in 2008 she was in front of Steven Soderbergh’s (61) camera for “Che – Guerrilla”. Between 2010 and 2016, the native of Dülmer did not appear in a single film. The time of screen drought only ended with James Wan’s (47) horror sequel “Conjuring 2”.

What did Potente do during this time? In 2012 she married the American actor Derek Richardson. Their daughters were born in 2011 and 2013. The family lives in Los Angeles.

The German Hollywood export ruled out a return to Germany as early as 2016. “Our life is centered in the USA. For us, work and life take place here,” Potente revealed to the news agency spot on news in an interview at the time. In addition, her husband does not speak a word of German.

Potente has also appeared in several US series productions, such as “Dr. House”, “American Horror Story”, the US remake of the Scandinavian crime series “The Bridge – Transit to Death” or the grandiose, mystical historical series “Taboo” with lead actor Tom Hardy (46). A great acting career. Potente was just never able to top her huge initial success.