Franka Comes Home From Hollywood

Potente first burst on to the movie scene as the athletic flame-haired Lola dashing desperately through the streets of Berlin in the 1998 fast-paced blockbuster Run Lola Run.

Since then there’s no been no looking back for the 29-year-old, whose career took off with equal speed after the movie became a runaway hit worldwide and earned the rare honor of getting its own U.S. release.

It wasn’t long before Hollywood came knocking. Potente, credited with kindling a German film renaissance, made her first English-language film debut with Johnny Depp in Blow in 2001 and later starred alongside Matt Damon (photo) in the action-thriller Bourne Identity.

In a recent interview with Deutsche Welle, Potente admitted she had rather enjoyed the star treatment meted out to her in the toughest of film industries. "We (in Germany) don’t have much of a star system,” she said. “So with a German actor, who’s just made some film they like, they tend to go completely over the top in a way you’re just not used to. That was something I really enjoyed a lot."

Back to Berlin

But Potente surprised fans when she recently moved back to Berlin from Los Angeles saying simply, "I began to miss my life in Berlin," and pointing out that the year in Los Angeles was primarily for personal reasons, rather than professional ones.

However, Potente said her return to Germany didn’t spell an end to her career in Los Angeles. "The possibility to work in the States naturally came with the Lola Run breakthrough and is still limited," she said. "But I will take up the work I want to do there just like in Germany. I also find it good when I don’t have to erase my accent in English-language productions."

The star, sporting a new long-haired blonde look (photo), is already basking in the praise showered on her latest role, which marks her return to German film for the first time in three years.

Mother-daughter double

Potente plays a double role as mother and daughter in the latest science-fiction flick Blueprint, which hit cinemas across Germany last week.

Based on a book by Charlotte Kenner and largely shot in Canada, Blueprint is the story of an exceptionally talented and internationally acclaimed pianist and diva, Iris Sellen, whose career threatens to come to a devastating end when she discovers that she is suffering from multiple sclerosis. Sellen then meets a fertility expert, who bizarrely offers to clone her so that Sellen’s extraordinary musical talent may be preserved.

Potente plays both the mother and the cloned daughter Siri, a photographer who lives in a hut in the Canadian wilderness ever since she is told of the horrifying secret of her existence and grapples to come to terms with the fact that she is simply a copy of an original, a mere "blueprint."

The film, directed by Rolf Schübel (Gloomy Sunday – A Song of Love and Death), shows in a series of flashbacks how Siri was born and how the relationship between mother and daughter developed over time.

To clone or not to clone

Critics have pointed out that Blueprint comes at the perfect time, when the debate over cloning and its ethical and moral implications is raging and predict that the film is bound to stir controversy. Others, however, have said the film only deals superficially with the phenomenon of cloning and its consequences for society.

Potente for her part rationalized medical cloning. "I think there really are a lot of people in the world who probably feel like they’ve done so much in life, made so much of their talents and ambitions that they feel the need to bequeath it to someone," Potente said. "I don’t know how to explain it because basically I do find it a bit perverse. I don’t want to clone anyone, not even myself."

Another Berlin flick?

The Münster-born Potente isn’t revealing what’s next on the cards, but has hinted she would like to stay on in Berlin. "I’d like to do a film in Berlin again, I’ve only ever made one movie here, surprisingly enough," she said. "I don’t know if it’s because there isn’t much being made here or what – but the work always seem to be somewhere else."

Fans will be waiting to see if the star can once again pull off the winning formula of a live-wire performance in a Berlin-based film.