Image: OÖN
Over 120 films and series can be found in the long career of the actress. Nadja Tiller, who was born on March 16, 1929 in Vienna to an opera singer and an actor, originally had very different plans than following in her father’s footsteps. Instead, her heart’s desire was to train as a hairdresser, as she once said: “My grandparents had a hairdressing salon in Gdansk. The first house in town. It was great and I was incredibly impressed. I wanted to learn to be a hairdresser in order to take over this salon.” In the end, the Second World War thwarted their plans.
The first Miss Austria
The year 1949 then became decisive in Nadja Tiller’s career, as it was here that she won the election for the first Miss Austria. At that time she had already taken the path towards acting, studying from 1945 at the Max Reinhardt Seminar and until 1949 at the Music and Acting Academy. In the same year she also became a member of the ensemble at the Theater in der Josefstadt.
However, the real biotope of Nadja Tiller was the cinema screen. She was able to embody vamp and grande dame at the same time and thus also attracted the attention of the European industry. She could have bathed in the Trevi Fountain (“La Dolce Vita”) instead of Anita Ekberg, played alongside Marcello Mastroianni (“La notte”) and filmed with Alain Delon (“Rocco and his brothers”). But Tiller rejected all these offers. They could have made her a world star. “Unfortunately I wasn’t smart enough and too stupid and then didn’t accept three very famous films,” Tiller once told the dpa.
The list of their commitments is still impressive. She works internationally, plays alongside Jean Paul Belmondo (“Der Schlaufuchs”), Anita Ekberg and OW Fischer (“El Hakim”). She remembers a film from 1958 in particular: “My favorite film is without question the one I made with Jean Gabin (“In the Coat of the Night”, note).” Gabin was a great, precise and very collegial actor.
On the film set, she not only found fame, but also her Walter. In 1956 she married the German actor Walter Giller (“The Three from the Gas Station”). The two were long considered the glamor couple of the economic miracle. The two were married for 55 years before he died in 2011 at the age of 84. Both described a lot of tolerance as the secret of their long marriage.
At the same time, Walter Giller’s death did not mean the end of Nadja Tiller’s career, who also accepted engagements afterwards – albeit smaller ones. In 2013 she recorded the award-winning radio play “Traumrolle” with the Swiss actor Fritz Lichtenhahn, who also lived in Tiller’s retirement home in Hamburg until his death. And at the age of 87, Tiller appeared on stage in a small role in “My Fair Lady” in Braunschweig before finally saying goodbye to the theater.
On the occasion of her 90th birthday in 2019, the Viennese looked back on her life with satisfaction. “I’ve been very fortunate in my life – not least because I had a particularly nice husband. I’m just happy!”
Source: Nachrichten
