Ursula Strauss

Weitere Namen
Uschi Strauss (Schreibvariante)
Cast
Melk, Österreich

Biography

Ursula Strauss, born April 25, 1974, in Melk, Austria, went to Vienna after graduating from Bildungsanstalt für Kindergartenpädagogik. In Vienna, she attended drama school at Volkstheater from 1993 to 1996. During the following years, Strauss worked at several theaters in Austria and in Germany. For instance, she performed in a production of "Leonce und Lena" at Vienna's Ensemble Theater, in a production of "Much Ado About Nothing" at Theater in der Josefstadt, and in a production of "Die lustigen Nibelungen" at Stadttheater Kiel.

In 2000, Strauss made her debut as a movie actress in a supporting role in the drama "Gelbe Kirschen" ("White Cherries"). Three years later, she played a leading role in the ensemble of Barbara Albert's omnibus film "Böse Zellen" ("Free Radicals"). After striking supporting roles in films such as "Crash Test Dummies" (2005) or Barbara Albert's film "Fallen" ("Falling", 2006), Strauss had another leading role on the movie screen in 2008: In Götz Spielmann's highly-praised drama "Revanche", she plays a frustrated wife who unwittingly engages in an affair with a man who wants to kill her husband in revenge. Strauss won a special award at the 2009 Diagonale Film Festival in Graz for her performance in the film although the festival usually does not give out awards to actors.

From 2009, Ursula Strauss played the title role of Inspector Angelika Schnell in the Austrian crime series "Schnell ermittelt". In 2010, she won the Austrian Film and Television Award Romy as Most Popular Series Star for this part.

2010 saw the start of the war drama "Vielleicht in einem anderen Leben" ("In Another Lifetime", AT/HU/DE), in which Strauss once again played alongside her "Revanche" co-star Johannes Krisch. For her portrayal of a farmer who is confronted with a group of Hungarian concentration camp prisoners on a death march during World War 2, she won the Austrian Film Award, the Chinese film award 'Golden Rooster' and the Romy as Most Popular Actress.

The feature films she appeared in in the next few years were also Austrian productions, including Wolfgang Murnberger's tragicomedy "Mein bester Feind" ("My Best Enemy", AT/LU 2011), set during the Nazi era, and the psychological thriller "Mein Fleisch und Blut" ("Place of Shelter", AT 2016). For the lead role in the World War II drama "Maikäfer flieg" ("Fly Away Home", AT 2016) she was awarded Best Actress at the Diagonale in Graz; she also won another Romy as Most Popular Actress for this role together with the roles in the TV productions "Das Sacher. In bester Gesellschaft" ("Hotel Sacher", AT 2016) and "Die Stille danach" ("The Silence That Follows", AT 2016).

Mainly, however, she worked on television, where she appeared in numerous movies and series. In the biopic "Käthe Kruse" (DE/AT 2015) she was the mother of the title character, in Stefan Krohmer's award-winning psychodrama "Meine fremde Freundin" (2017) she was an alleged rape victim, and in the comedy series "Wischen ist Macht" (AT 2020) she played the ambitious boss of a Viennese cleaning company. This role earned her another Romy.

In 2021, Ursula Strauss was seen in a feature film on the big screen again: In "Le Prince," she played a woman in her mid-forties from the Frankfurt art scene whose new love for a Congolese businessman is met with prejudice and mistrust.

Filmography

2021-2023
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2021/2022
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2019-2021
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2017/2018
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2015/2016
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2014
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2013/2014
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2010/2011
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2011/2012
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2009-2011
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2008/2009
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2008/2009
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2007/2008
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2006
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2004/2005
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2004
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2002/2003
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