Katharina Böhm turns 60: The “boss” and her puzzles

This typical smile is her most important trademark. It is not the beaming smile of a successful woman that tends to show more teeth than warmth. It’s a small, even cautious smile, with a bit of skepticism. It makes this woman’s star appeal – and she is without a doubt a star – a little more fragile and therefore more approachable.

When Katharina Böhm smiles like that, she is the woman that millions of TV viewers adore and love. She has appeared in well over 70 films, mostly for television, often in series. She usually embodies a beautiful, very feminine woman who appears vulnerable on the outside but has a strong, combative character. That would also suit her nature, she once said.

Since 2012, fans have seen her regularly in the ZDF series “Die Chefin”, a ratings winner from the Mainz TV station, for which Katharina Böhm attracts over five million people to the television with each episode. She plays the chief detective Vera Lanz, a woman of striking beauty and great assertiveness.

You might not believe that this extraordinary TV police officer would gradually be heading towards retirement in real life, but it is true: Katharina Böhm will be 60 years old on November 20th.

A second trademark is the name. Katharina Böhm’s Austrian father Karlheinz Böhm (1928-2014) was a celebrity as an actor throughout the German-speaking world, especially through his role in the “Sissi” trilogy as Emperor Franz Joseph alongside the enchanting Romy Schneider (1938-1982). Karlheinz Böhm later became the face of the aid organization “People for People,” which fights against poverty in Ethiopia.

The grandfather was a brilliant world famous: Karl Böhm (1894-1981), one of the great conductors of his time. There are photos that show Katharina Böhm as a little girl on her legendary grandfather’s lap. His wife, the well-known soprano and opera singer Thea Linhard-Böhm (1903-1981), was Katharina’s grandmother. So she grew up with only classical music. As a teenager, she rebelled against this and played the Beatles very loudly, which her grandfather also liked.

And then there was her mother Barbara Lass (1940-1995), whose real name was Kwiatkowska and who came from Poland. She was considered the Polish Brigitte Bardot (90), went to Paris in 1960, filmed with Alain Delon (1935-2024), among others, and her first marriage was to the director Roman Polański (91). In 1962 she met Karlheinz Böhm while filming “Rififi in Tokyo”, they fell in love and married. In 1964 their daughter Katharina was born in Sorengo near Lugano in Switzerland. The marriage was not particularly happy and ultimately ended in divorce in 1980.

After the separation, the daughter initially lived primarily with her father and was even with him on his first trip to Africa. But from the age of 12 she spent her youth with her mother in a house in Baldham, a district of Vaterstetten near Munich, where her grandfather Karl Böhm had already lived.

It is said that Katharina Böhm has inherited her mother’s beauty and is becoming more and more like her, which the daughter perceives as a “very nice compliment”. Barbara Lass lived in Baldham until her early death at the age of 54 (from a cerebral hemorrhage). In her homeland, she is revered as a political heroine because she actively supported the Solidarity trade union movement, which acted against Poland’s communist regime. Polish opposition members sought refuge in their house in Bavaria.

At this point, daughter Katharina had long since followed her parents’ career path. At the age of 12 she was already in front of the camera in Switzerland for the series “Heidi” (as Klara). This was followed by her first leading role at the age of 20 in “Kaltes Fever” (with Ulrich Tukur, Axel Milberg and Joachim Król, among others).

From 1988 she thrilled German-speaking audiences in her first major TV role as the enchanting Countess Susanne (“Nane”) von Guldenburg in the successful series “The Heritage of the Guldenburgs” (ZDF). That was the breakthrough.

Katharina Böhm was also a member of the ensemble at the Theater in der Josefstadt. In Italy she appeared in eight episodes of the Italian crime series “Commissario Montalbano” and starred in the series “The Children’s Clinic”, “The Inseparables” and “Night Shift”. She had major appearances in films, including “Dangerous Feelings” (2004) and “Murder in the Best Family” (2011).

Finally, ZDF offered her the opportunity to take on the title role in the new Friday evening series “Die Chefin”. Of all things, a role as a policewoman! “As a child of the 80s, from a very free-spirited family, I was always rather suspicious of law enforcement. My previous contacts with the police were limited to confrontations at anti-nuclear power demonstrations,” she once revealed to spot on news.

Today Katharina Böhm is one of the most popular actresses in Germany – and at the same time one of the most unknown. Appearances off the set are very rare, little is known about her private life, and she consistently stays out of the tabloid headlines.

She still lives in her parents’ home in Baldham with her son Samuel, whom she raised as a single parent. She doesn’t publicly reveal who Samuel’s father is, she only says that her son is in contact with him. Her partner is the director Rick Ostermann (46).

“At some point I googled what was written about me in Wikipedia,” she once revealed in an interview with spot on news. “Not everything is true, but that doesn’t matter to me. I was brought up with the press at such an early age that I don’t give it much weight.”

Modesty plays a big role in the life of the woman with the big name. She says she loves walking her two dogs at night. She noticed “how nice it is to walk around in this silence at night and how much that gives me. I don’t know if it has something to do with age, but I’m increasingly appreciating less.”

In the same conversation with the “Osnabrücker Zeitung” she also explains her definition of her profession: “The word film star was never in my head. I prefer actress because it has to do with the concepts of looking and playing. That has always appealed to me . For me it’s still like a sandbox: The child claims that the sandbox is a pirate ship and then it’s a pirate ship, that’s no longer questioned. And I can still play in the sandbox today, that’s brilliant.”