Andrea Sawatzki is one of the best-known actresses in Germany – and now also writes successful novels. Now she is 60 years old. A topic that drives her.
Berlin – When actresses reach a certain age, many suddenly don’t get role offers. A lot has happened in this area in recent years. In the industry, however, one still speaks of a slow change. The actress Andrea Sawatzki, who turns 60 this Thursday (February 23), cannot complain about little work.
In autumn she was seen in Dories Dörrie’s comedy “Freibad” in the cinema, in January she appeared alongside Walter Sittler in the ZDF comedy “Sterben ist auch kein Solution”. The episode film “Notes of Berlin” with Sawatzki as the grieving mother will be available in the ARD media library from March 5th.
This is how Sawatzki came up with the idea for her novel
And then of course there is Gundula Bundschuh. Sawatzki, who has also been a successful author for several years, practically wrote the role for herself. She has penned five novels about the chaotic Bundschuh family. ZDF filmed the stories and made a whole series out of them. The family saga has been running successfully in the second series since 2015, starring Sawatzki as the caring housewife Gundula and Axel Milberg as husband Gerald.
The idea came to her around her 50th birthday, Sawatzki recently told the radio station SR 3. When she was asked from all sides whether she wanted to slow down a bit. She was totally annoyed about that and found the questioning discriminatory. “As if you could only get around with a walker.” She then decided: Instead of getting upset about it, she’d better write a book about a woman her age, about whom she can laugh a little herself.
In 1997 she had her big breakthrough
Getting older drives Sawatzki. When she speaks publicly about it, she often explains that it bothers her how society deals with it. She doesn’t leave a good hair on her own industry. She experiences again and again that great actresses no longer get great offers after a certain age. Even if that’s not the case with her, she’s glad to have Gundula Bundschuh – a woman “who can be my age”.
Sawatzki’s film characters often have something bizarre, sometimes unfathomable about them. Her breakthrough came in 1997 as the mentally ill Alma in the Ingrid Noll film “The Pharmacist”. In the role, she played Katja Riemann and Jürgen Vogel against the wall for ten minutes, judged the “Spiegel”. Sawatzki became known to a wider audience in the role of the melancholy chief inspector Charlotte Sänger in the Frankfurt crime thriller “Tatort”, which she took on for seven years. For this she received the Grimme Prize in 2005.
As an axolotl on “The Masked Singer”
The native Bavarian also shows how versatile she is with her talent for comedy, for example with the Bavarian dialect in Doris Dörrie’s mini-series “Climate Change” about menopause. In recent years, Sawatzki has often been seen in comedies, for example in the ZDF series Bella about a betrayed wife, alongside the Bundschuhs. A year and a half ago, Sawatzki made it to the semifinals of the ProSieben show “The Masked Singer” in an axolotl costume. “I love making people laugh,” she told SR 3.
But she also sees “sadness, or loneliness, or fear” as a prerequisite for playing a comedy. A year ago, Sawatzki gave a surprisingly deep insight into her private life with her autofictional novel “Brunnenstraße”. She describes with ruthless honesty how as a child she had to take care of her father, who had Alzheimer’s disease. After this painful experience, she was not ready for a relationship for a long time.
This is how Sawatzki continues
That changed when she met her fellow actor Christian Berkel (65). The two are considered the dream couple in the industry, have two sons who are now grown up, and live with several dogs on Berlin’s Schlachtensee. Her love for animals and nature is great, one of Sawatzki’s greatest wishes is a domestic pig, and she has had her own dog podcast for some time.
Instagram post by Sawatzki
What’s next for her? As much as she likes acting in comedies, she would like to act in more serious subjects again in the future, Sawatzki told the SR. And on her Instagram account, she hints that there will soon be something to read from her again. Next to a photo showing her with her dog in Andalusia are the hashtags #andalusia #roman #write. Stepping down sounds different. dpa
