She sings, she dances, she acts with her heart and soul! Dagmar Manzel — both as an actress and as a singer — has a compelling power that it is hard to resist. A Berlin-born graduate of the Berlin Schauspielschule, she is one of Germany’s most successful actresses.
From 1980 to 1983 she was a member of the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, and from 1983 to 2001 she was a member of the ensemble of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, where she is currently appearing as a guest artist in Gift with Ulrich Matthes.
Music is her special love. Following a solo evening, she shone in Offenbach’s La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein at the Deutsches Theater and in La Périchole at the Berliner Ensemble. She has also enjoyed great success in operetta and musical theatre productions at the Komische Oper Berlin, including Sweeney Todd, Kiss Me, Kate, Im Weißen Rößl, Ball im Savoy, Eine Frau, die weiß, was sie will!, Die Perlen der Cleopatra, Anatevka and Die sieben Todsünden. In 2020 Barrie Kosky created a monodrama evening for her, comprising Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire and Beckett’s Nicht Ich (Not I) and Rockaby.
Guest appearances have taken her to venues including Theater Rigiblick, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and in 2016 to Wiesbaden, where she appeared with Ensemble Modern in the world premiere of Helmut Oehring’s Agota? Die Analphabetin.
Important film and television appearances have included Heiner Carow’s Coming Out, Helmut Dietl’s Schtonk, the three-part series Der Laden and Klemperer — Ein Leben in Deutschland. She won the Adolf Grimme Prize and a Bavarian TV award in 2004 for her role in Leben wäre schön, and in 2006 she won a German Television Award for her appearances in Matti Geschonneck’s Die Nachrichten and Andreas Kleinert’s Als der Fremde kam. Her recent film work includes Die Unsichtbare (2010), Dietl’s Die verlorene Zeit (2010) and Zettl (2011). She starred as the rock singer Anne in Frei nach Plan, and was honoured at the International Film Festival in Shanghai. Since 2014 Dagmar Manzel has appeared as a detective in the Franconian Tatort.
In recent years she has made a name for herself with audiobook recordings of Joyce’s Dubliners, Schalansky’s Der Hals der Giraffe and Thoreau’s Über die Pflicht zum Ungehorsam gegen den Staat (On the Duty of Civil Disobedience). In 2013 she won the German Audiobook Prize for Christa Wolf’s August.
In 2017 Dagmar Manzel published her autobiography MENSCHENsKIND with Aufbau Verlag.
