Karin
Neuhäuser
Karin Neuhäuser was born in 1955 as the fifth child of a family of refugees from the former Sudetenland after World War II, who lived in rather poor conditions for many years.
After finishing high school, spending a year in the United States as an au pair, and completing a four-year teacher training programme, she finally decided to become an actress and was accepted to the Schauspielschule Bochum in 1979.
In 1982, Klaus Emmerich cast her in a leading role in Rote Erde, the acclaimed television series about the history of Germany's Ruhr region, which gave her a year of intensive experience in front of the camera.
This marked the beginning of her journey through numerous theatres, including Schlosstheater Moers, Wuppertaler Bühnen, Theater an der Ruhr (under the direction of Roberto Ciulli, with guest performances in South America, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Tehran, St Petersburg, Kyiv, Moscow, Cairo and many other cities), Volksbühne Berlin (including Richard III), Schaubühne Berlin (working with Luc Perceval and Falk Richter), and Schauspielhaus Zürich (working with Christoph Marthaler, Stefan Pucher, Jan Bosse, among others).
Since 2000, Karin Neuhäuser has also worked as a theatre director in Münster, Kassel, Frankfurt am Main, Düsseldorf, Mülheim, Cologne and Hamburg. Her productions include The Oresteia at Schauspiel Frankfurt, which was invited to the Epidaurus Festival in 2007.
From 2009 to 2022, she was a member of the ensemble of the Thalia Theater Hamburg, where she worked with directors including Jette Steckel, Stefan Pucher, Kornél Mundruczó, Anne Lenk, Antú Romero Nunes, and, finally, Kirill Serebrennikov in Legende.
She also appeared in Karin Beier's Anthropolis cycle at Schauspielhaus Hamburg.
Currently Karin Neuhäuser is touring with Dancing Idiots, an independent production by Thorsten Lensing based on stories by Denis Johnson.
Her awards include the Der Faust German Theatre Award, the Theatre Prize of the German Critics' Association, the Best Actress Award at the NRW Theatertreffen (twice), and the Gordana Kosanović Award at the MESS International Theatre Festival in Sarajevo.
Alongside her theatre work, she has appeared in numerous television productions, including Tatort, Jahrestage (Margarethe von Trotta), and Sag mir nichts (Andreas Kleinert), as well as feature films such as In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts, Fatih Akin), Emmas Glück (Sven Taddicken), O Beautiful Night (Xaver Böhm), Milk Teeth (Milchzähne, Sophia Bösch), and A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick).
Photo by Armin Smailovic