Dana Vávrová was born in Prague in 1967 and was already a child star in her native Czechoslovakia when she was cast in the lead of the German TV series "Ein Stück Himmel". During the shooting of the series, she got to know the cameraman Joseph Vilsmaier and they subsequently married. Since then, she won many prizes for her roles in his films like "Autumn Milk" (Herbstmilch, 1988), "Rama Dama" (1990), "Stalingrad" (1992), "Brother of Sleep" ("Schlafes Bruder", 1994) and "The Harmonists" (1997). She has also made regular appeareances in TV films by directors like Marian Vajda and Peter Lehner. In 1995, she co-directed "Wie die Zeit vergeht", a documentary on the Alpine rocker Hubert von Goisern, and made her directorial debut proper with "Hunger - Addicted To Love" ("Hunger - Sehnsucht nach Liebe", 1997), followed by "Bear on the Run" ("Der Baer ist los", 2000) and "The Last Train" ("Der letzte Zug", 2006, in co-direction with Joseph Vilsmaier).

Dana Vávrová died of cancer February 5, 2009, at the age of 41.

Source: German Films Service & Marketing GmbH