Franka Potente

The elder of two children, Potente was born in Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, and raised in nearby Dülmen. Her mother, Hildegard, is a medical assistant, and her father, Dieter Potente, is a teacher. Her Italian surname stems from her great-grandfather, a slate mason who came to Germany from Sicily in the 1800s. At age 17, she spent some months as an exchange student in Humble Texas.

After finishing high school in Germany, Potente enrolled at the Otto Falckenberg School of Performing Arts in Munich. Potente took acting jobs outside school time and appeared in her first movie in the 1995 student film, Aufbruch. She was then spotted by a casting agent and appeared in the film Nach Fünf im Urwald (It's a Jungle Out There), directed by her then-boyfriend, Hans Christian Schmid. She received the 1995 Bavarian Film Prize for Young Talent for her work in this film. She then finished her last year of training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Manhattan.

Potente returned to Europe and worked in many German and French films. She was cast as the lead in Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) after meeting the director, Tom Tykwer, in a café. She made several more German-language films, including the horror film, Anatomy and the romantic thriller, The Princess and the Warrior.

Potente's first English-language role was that of the narrator in Storytelling in 2001. This was followed by a role in Blow, with Johnny Depp, and the female lead in The Bourne Identity, with Matt Damon, which she reprised in The Bourne Supremacy. In 2006, she starred with Eric Bana in the Australian film Romulus, My Father, for which she was nominated for an Australian Film Industry Award for Best Lead Actress. Also in 2006, she wrote and directed Der die Tollkirsche ausgräbt, a silent comedy.

Starting on May 22, 2007, Potente had a three-episode recurring role in FX drama The Shield, where she played Diro Kesakhian, the ruthless Godmother of LA's Armenian Mafia.

When not working on location, Potente lives in Berlin. She has dated American actor Elijah Wood and director Tom Tykwer. In 2008, she got engaged to an American businessman. She told the German tabloid Bild that her fiance's name is Dio and that they plan on having children.