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She was Run Lola Run’s technicolour redhead. Now german actress
Franka Potente storms Hollywood as Matt Damon’s accomplice in The
Bourne Identity.
Story: Angela Baldassarre
Photos: Rob Dutchin
With that retro punk hairdo and long, lanky legs,
Franka Potente is every bit the title character of Tom Twyker’s
sleeper hit Run Lola Run, the film that thrust both her and its
director onto the international scene. Despite being a household name
in her native Germany, 27-year-old Potente is quickly becoming Hollywood’s
latest “discovery”, having starred in Blow with Johnny
Depp and Penelope Cruz, and now appearing in Go director Doug Liman’s
version of Robert Ludlum’s The
Bourne Identity, opposite Matt Damon.
“Yeah, it is kind of weird,” she says about
her cult status, as she stretches her black-jeaned legs on the couch.
“It’s interesting because in Germany people have been following
my work for about five years and they know all the movies I made. They
have a different perspective of me and they ask different things, and
they feel they know me. While here, I find interviews not so tiring
because people have a fresh and curious outlook about me. And that’s
nice.”
The
Bourne Identity follows Jason Bourne (Damon), a young man
found unconscious on a beach by fishermen. His quest: to find out who
and what he is. His memory is blank. He tries to remember things, but
nothing is coming back. One of the fishermen rids him of several bullets
in the back and even removes a small microfilm-like pointer from his
hip. The tiny pointer turns out to be the key to a Swiss bank account.
After recuperating, Bourne heads to Switzerland to uncover the truth
to his identity.
There he meets Marie St. Jacques (Potente) in an alley
after a daring escape from the Swiss US embassy where he’s suddenly
pursued by a CIA operative. He’s got a lot of cash, she’s
got a car. He needs to go to Paris, she needs money. While hiding out
from dangerous enemies, Marie soon realizes that Jason is the “one”
for her.
And the “one” for Potente, the man who “rescued”
her life, is Twyker, the man who thrust her into the world spotlight
with his quirky Run Lola Run which, sources say, he wrote with
Potente in mind after seeing her in a television movie.
“I still don’t believe that,” laughs
Franka. “I was a huge fan of his before I even met him. I was in
New York at theatre school when they told me he wanted to meet me. I
had a wisdom tooth pulled out so I was really sick but I had to fly
to Berlin to meet him. He was one of those directors that I desperately
wanted to work with. When we sat down the first thing he asked me was
‘Do you think you can scream real loud?’ Yeah, of course!
‘Do you think you can run a lot?’ Yeah, sure. I said yes to
everything he asked even though I knew I couldn’t do any of it.
He gave me the script and I read it in 20 minutes. I would’ve done
it even if he gave me an apple for it. It looked like fun.”
And through the play came the love. The two fell head
over heels long after Lola was finished, but the professional
collaboration didn’t end there.
“I was there when he developed his next project
[The Princess and the Warrior]. It’s not that he necessarily
had to use me because I’m his girlfriend, but I knew that he wrote
it for me,” she explains. “We had talked about it a lot, on
how we were going to do it. We were sure that we wanted to try and take
it a step further. There was a basic trust between us and we enjoyed
working together. There were so many challenges, and it was very exhausting.
But I like it when you work 40 hours a day and you have the feeling
at the end of the day that you’re dead, but you’ve really
achieved something.”
Yet one wonders how the experience differed from working
with a director versus working with your lover.
“Well, it’s a little bit better,” she
smiles coyly. “It’s hard to ignore the fact that this is the
man I love when we’re working together, especially when you’re
exchanging glances. Of course, it doesn’t stop when you wrap the
day. Your whole life is dedicated to the movie. We’re happy in
this situation, even if we don’t ever work together again.”
And at the pace they’re both going, that’s
not such a far-fetched concept. While Potente was stateside doing her
Hollywood “thing,” Twyker was wrapping up shooting his latest
film, Heaven, starring Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi. While
both don’t miss the opportunity to snuggle up and kiss as they
pass each other in these T.O. hotel’s hallways, often there’s
the Atlantic Ocean separating them.
“My roots and my home is Germany. I’m going
home as soon as possible,” insists Potente. “As an actor you
have to work with what you know. It’s important that at home people
know my work. They knew me before Lola. I don’t care if
the US knows me. And I know that Tom and I will work together again,
but we’re not going to force the issue. Right now we just enjoy
every minute we have together.”
Visit Franka Potente's official site: www.franka-potente.de
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Chemical Brothers 
