Alexandra Maria Lara (née Plătăreanu; 12 November 1978) is a Romanian-German actress who has appeared in Downfall (2004), Control (2007), Youth Without Youth (2007), The Reader (2008), Rush (2013), and Geostorm (2017).

Early life

Born in Bucharest, Lara is the only child of Valentin Plătăreanu, an actor, and his wife, Doina. Her father was a successful actor and director in Romania, directing many plays such as Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare and Hernani by Victor Hugo. In 1983, her family emigrated to West Germany from their home in Bucharest, Romania. Although the family had originally planned to emigrate to Canada, they settled in Freiburg im Breisgau, before eventually moving to West Berlin. She gained fluency in German during this time.

Career

By sixteen she was playing lead roles in various television dramas; since then she has appeared in films, including as Traudl Junge, Adolf Hitler's secretary, in the Academy Award-nominated 2004 film Downfall; following this Francis Ford Coppola wrote her a letter and gave her a leading role in Youth Without Youth (2007). In 2007 she also appeared as Belgian journalist Annik Honoré in the biopic Control. In 2008 she served as a member of the Cannes Film Festival jury. She has also appeared in several French productions, including Napoléon and L'Affaire Farewell. She appeared in The Reader and Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, which were both nominated for the 81st Academy Awards for best picture and best foreign language film respectively. In 2018 Lara starred with her husband, Sam Riley, in Happy New Year, Colin Burstead by Ben Wheatley, playing his German girlfriend. Alongside Florian Gallenberger Lara has been serving as president of the Deutsche Filmakademie since 2022.

Personal life

In August 2009 Lara married English actor Sam Riley, with whom she had acted in the films Control and Suite Française. In January 2014 she gave birth to their first child, a boy. They also played a couple on screen in Ben Wheatley's drama Happy New Year, Colin Burstead.

Filmography