Biography

Berlin-born Nina Franoszek is an internationally established star of stage, screen and television and LA based film and theater director. She won a Grimme Prize (Germany's Emmy Award) for best actress in 1998 and a German Screen Actors Award for best Ensemble in the TV series "Weissensee Saga II" in 2014.

She played a wide range of roles from tragedy to comedy in over 100 feature films, and TV productions. Her worldwide credits include films from Germany, Austria, Italy, France, South Africa, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Canada and the United States.

Helmut Sorge ("Der Spiegel") wrote about Franoszek: "Her strength lies in her classical looks and rich inner life, an interesting mix of rich sensuality and comfortable self-confidence. She has a passion for life, the arts and loves the facets of human nature. A type of woman that belongs to yesterday, to the area of Romanticism, but also in the present, in the time of Egos, competition and stock market crashes."

Franoszek made her international movie debut with the award winning "Buster's Bedroom", a whimsical comedy inspired by Buster Keaton with Donald Sutherland, Geraldine Chaplin and noted cinematographer Sven Nykvist behind the camera. She starred opposite Academy Award winning Jiri Menzel in "Joint Venture", performed with Tilda Swinton in "The Party-Nature Morte" and Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) directed her in "Murderous Decision". Her feature film credits include "Beyond The Sea" by Kevin Spacey and "The Pianist" by Roman Polanski.

She is the first person narrator of Dietrich in "Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song," a documentary directed by Dietrich's grandson, J. David Riva and she starred in the feature film "Martha" a modern day "Mrs. Robinson story".

On TV Franoszek guest starred in the critical acclaimed second season of "Mad Men" as sophisticated Greta in the Fellini-esque "The Jet Set" episode. Don Draper's business trip to Los Angeles takes an unexpected detour when he falls in with her group of wealthy European nomads.

Alongside Ray Wise she embodied Gala, the Swedish "Good Witch of the North" in Illeana Douglas's award winning web series "Easy to Assemble"- Finding North, (2011). And in Rob Coddry's satirical Emmy Award winning TV series "Children's Hospital - The Gang Gets Sushi (2013)" she played the NATO-host opposite Jordan Peele and Erinn Hayes.

Back in Germany she was cast as the recurring role of psychologist Ute Dannowski in the second season of the award winning TV series "The Weissensee Saga", an East Berlin Love Story that deals with East Germany's recent past. A family saga of conflicting loyalties, love, hope, faith and betrayal set behind the Berlin Wall. Franoszek and the cast of "The Weissensee Saga" won a German Screen Actors Award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series in 2014.

In HBO's dark Comedy "The Brink" Franoszek plays French Foreign Minister Dominique Roget opposite Tim Robbins and Jack Black.

Franoszek is also a motion capture performer and voice talent and plays the antagonist Frau Engel in the Inglourious Basterds-esque Game of "Wolfenstein: The New Order".

She is an accomplished stage actor, who received her MFA from the University of Music, Drama and Media Hanover, Germany and a member of Deutsche Filmakademie (Germany's Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences), the German Directors Guild (BVR), Co - initiator of the German Screen Actors Guild (BFFS) and served as a juror for the international Emmy Awards (2007-2014).

Franoszek passes her experience on as an acting coach and career consultant, works as an instructor for MFA Film Acting Programs in LA and was recently seen on Heidi Klum's TV Show "Germany's Next Top Model" teaching the aspiring models how to successfully cry on cue.

- IMDb mini biography by: zbf.berlin@t-online.de