A luminous bold-featured, blonde Teutonic beauty, Hanna Schygulla met Rainer Werner Fassbinder while taking an acting class in Munich and began working with him at the Munich Action Theater, where he assembled the nucleus of his cinematic stock company. She appeared in nearly 20 features in 12 years for the workaholic director, her open-hearted sensuality burning brighter than the upper-class, intellectual alternative provided by another Fassbinder favorite Margit Carstensen. Providing the dramatic cornerstone of some of his finest films, Schygulla became established as one of the leading
With mother, fled to Munich when the Red Army approached Kattowitz
1949
Met father (who had been held as a POW during WWII) for the first time at age five (date approximate)
1968
Joined Munich Action Theater, where she worked with Rainer Werner Fassbinder (date approximate)
1968
Acted in the short "The Bridegroom, The Comedienne, and the Pimp", written and directed by Jean-Marie Straub; Fassbinder played the pimp
1969
First films with Fassbinder as director, "Love Is Colder Than Death" (as a prostitute), "Gods of the Plague" (initial collaboration with actress Margarethe von Trotta) and "Katzelmacher" (film version of writer-director's first stage play)
