Brigitte Grothum

Brigitte Grothum was born in Dessau (Saxony-Anhalt), the daughter of an engineer and a teacher and a niece of German aviation pioneer Hans Grade. In Berlin from the age of fifteen, she completed her matriculation at the Ricarda Huch School. Early on, she had aspirations of becoming a pianist, but a broken finger put paid to that. Instead, she took acting lessons under Marlise Ludwig and Herma Clement and debuted on the stage, now aged nineteen, at the Tempelhofer Zimmertheater. Since then, Grothum has been almost continuously engaged at various theatres, mainly in Berlin, but also in Frankfurt and Zurich. From 1987, she added to her reputation as a stage director/producer, beginning with her adaptation of Jedermann by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Grothum was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2000 for her contribution to the theatre.

In films from 1955, Grothum had an early lead as the titular heroine in the equestrian wartime drama Das Mädchen Marion (1956). She was then cast as Grethe Weiser's daughter in the comedy Lemkes sel. Witwe (1957) and Elisabeth Bergner's in the family saga Die glücklichen Jahre der Thorwalds (1962). Her main breakthrough came opposite the eccentric Klaus Kinski (with whom she developed a long-standing friendship) in the Edgar Wallace thriller The Strange Countess (1961). She appeared in two more Wallace adaptations, The Inn on the River (1962) (again with Kinski as the shady Gregor Gubanoff, who worked ostensibly in "imports and exports") and Der Fluch der gelben Schlange (1963). Her roles on the small screen have included the Dürrenmatt adaption of Romulus der Große (1965), the three-part Francis Durbridge miniseries Ein Mann namens Harry Brent (1968) and guest appearances in episodes of popular crime shows like Tatort (1970), The Old Fox (1977) and Der Kriminalist (2006). In the long-running cult TV series Drei Damen vom Grill (1977) she was acclaimed for her dual role of Magda Färber/Marion Mann alongside veterans Brigitte Mira and Harald Juhnke.

In addition to that substantial volume of work on stage and screen, Grothum has also been (from 1957) a prolific voice-over actress, dubbing for, among others, Diana Rigg (in The Avengers (1961)), Lee Remick, Barbara Eden, Angie Dickinson, Diane Keaton, Carol Lynley and Yvonne De Carlo.

Grothum has been married twice. Her second husband (of fifty years) was the orthopedist Manfred Weigert with whom she had two children, the actress Debora Weigert and production manager Tobias Weigert.