Franka Potente

“As a creative person, you want to be creative, you know? You don't want to constantly wait around - a lot of movies fall apart, or there's just not as much out there as there used to be.”

“I was hesitant about doing too big a role in an American movie because it meant losing my German accent.”

“To give somebody your time is the biggest gift you can give.”

“I've published one book before, and now I'm writing a book of essays and stories about life in Tokyo. And I have one book coming out in May in Germany, about fitness.”

“As an audience, if you see 1800s or something, it more often seems that the actors are carrying the weight of the time. It always has a Shakespearean tone to it. To me, that always feels very theatrical and very unrelatable.”

“I had an American boyfriend, went to football games, tennis tournaments, and to my prom. I was so serious about my American boyfriend that I brought him back to Germany with me to visit my parents. They were horrified.”

“I don't really care where I work, actually, because you know making a movie is like living in movie world. There's such a secluded world, and the director is the king ruling the country, and everybody's building this little town to speak in symbolism.”

“I choose my work very carefully, always for the script and the director, and I don't think that's going to change. My work is like a house. It's built on very strong poles.”

“I've made movies where I was not happy, and I'd rather not work for a year than do a bad film. It takes a long time for me to recuperate when I do that.”

“Everyone thinks 'Lola' was my first film, but I'd made 14 movies before that.”

“I think working with Johnny Depp was very intimidating. It was my fault though. I mean he's a total cool nice, nice guy, but I was just so, I don't know, overpowered by his presence. Like he's a very mystic person. He's older so I never really warmed up around him. I was so stiff.”

“The more crazy a person is, the more interesting the person is.”

“When 'Run Lola Run' came out, the thing about it was it was a very fast-paced film.”

“What really makes a hero a hero is if you take that person's hand, and you walk with that person, and they have a lot of weaknesses, but in the end, they overcome all of their obstacles.”

“Everybody is great when things are great. It's the 'not great' stuff that matters.”

“I'm so uncomfortable, especially in emotional situations, having to say sentences that don't feel right. As an actor - or really, as any kind of person sensitive to it.”

“When I was told that I was doing a movie called 'Lola Rennt,' I was like, 'What?' I didn't get it, or the title. I started reading the script, and I still couldn't fathom that it was about a person named Lola running. Before my agent explained it to me, I couldn't even make any sense out of it.”

“I don't like actors who try to talk directors into making their part bigger and that's really lame.”

“I always performed when I was a child. My parents got very annoyed, because my brother and I had our little bedrooms upstairs, and I would plaster the house with posters with arrows pointing upstairs.”

“We learn English from fifth grade on in school, and I was an exchange student when I was 17 in Houston.”