\n<\/p>\n
After Sandra H\u00fcller learned that two movies she stars in \u2014 \u201cAnatomy of a Fall\u201d and \u201cThe Zone of Interest\u201d \u2014 had been selected for the competition at last year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival, she was a little apprehensive about what it might mean for her anonymity. The German actress has always had a prickly relationship with fame: Aside from her role in the bittersweet 2016 feature \u201cToni Erdmann,\u201d she has mainly kept a low profile, working in German theater.<\/p>\n
But what happened next outstripped even her boldest expectations. \u201cAnatomy of a Fall,\u201d a French drama in which H\u00fcller plays a woman accused of murdering her husband, went on to win the Palme d\u2019Or, the festival\u2019s top honor, and \u201cThe Zone of Interest,\u201d a Holocaust film, took the Grand Prix, or runner-up prize. The Los Angeles Times<\/a> crowned her the \u201cqueen of Cannes,\u201d and, in a few weeks, she will travel from her home in Leipzig, Germany, to Hollywood for the Oscars, where she is nominated for best actress<\/a>, for \u201cAnatomy.\u201d<\/p>\n This attention has been challenging for H\u00fcller \u2014 at times overwhelmingly so \u2014 and now she is grappling with what the nomination, and its accompanying scrutiny, means for her and her career. \u201cIt means being accepted into a circle of people I wasn\u2019t in before,\u201d she said, in a recent interview in Leipzig. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know if it means success, or it will make anything easier.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sitting in a cafe with her black Weimaraner lying under the table, she was warm but a little guarded as she spoke about her newfound global fame. \u201cI like my life. I like my apartment. I like my everyday routine. There\u2019s no lack of anything that I had to fill. I wasn\u2019t waiting for this to happen,\u201d said H\u00fcller, 45. \u201cBut it means that people now believe I can do things that perhaps they didn\u2019t believe I could do before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was also surprising, she noted, because \u201cAnatomy of a Fall\u201d is not a typical Oscars movie. An ambiguous exploration of language, gender dynamics and toxic relationships, it centers on the question of whether H\u00fcller\u2019s character, a German writer also named Sandra, pushed her husband out a window to his death. The movie culminates in a series of courtroom scenes in which a judge \u2014 and the audience \u2014 must weigh her potential guilt.<\/p>\n In an email, the director of \u201cAnatomy of a Fall,\u201d Justine Triet, said that H\u00fcller was distinguished by \u201cthe absence of any kind of seduction both on and off the set,\u201d adding that she \u201csays what she thinks and is very direct.\u201d This honesty, she said, \u201cis probably what gives her such power on set: She\u2019s real.\u201d<\/p>\n The performance, H\u00fcller noted, seemed to have resonated with many women. \u201cPeople take this movie very personally,\u201d H\u00fcller said, adding that she has been approached since its release by women who had told her their relationship stories or of being caught in misogynist legal trials.<\/p>\n Why it had struck such a nerve, though, she couldn\u2019t say. \u201cI\u2019d have to be a market researcher, wouldn\u2019t I?\u201d she said. (H\u00fcller does not like to speculate in interviews.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe Zone of Interest\u201d offers a vastly different showcase for her talents. In the movie, she portrays Hedwig H\u00f6\u00df, the wife of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf H\u00f6\u00df, a woman luxuriating in domestic bliss right next to the extermination camp. In an email, Jonathan Glazer, the movie\u2019s British director, said that H\u00fcller was able to \u201cextinguish her inner life\u201d to \u201cportray the basic lousiness of someone who has fully normalized the suffering of others.\u201d<\/p>\n H\u00fcller had broken her longstanding rule about not playing Nazis for the film, in part, she said, because she sensed that Glazer had deeply grappled with the sensitivities around portraying the Holocaust. She pushed back against criticism that the film was overly stylized or too focused on the H\u00f6\u00df family. \u201cThis film is exclusively about the victims,\u201d she said. \u201cI think viewers connect it with the suffering, not the perpetrators.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Filmed in a set built next to the real camp, in Poland, Glazer shot with several static cameras simultaneously, sometimes not telling actors when they were rolling. (H\u00fcller\u2019s own Weimaraner plays the family\u2019s on-screen dog.) The approach, H\u00fcller said, was well suited to her stage background, because Glazer, who has also directed theater, \u201cis not interested in the directionality of the camera, so we don\u2019t act in a single direction.\u201d<\/p>\n In a phone interview, Johan Simons \u2014 the artistic director of the Schauspielhaus Bochum theater, in western Germany, and a frequent collaborator of H\u00fcller\u2019s \u2014 pointed to a sign of her maturity as an actress in a scene from \u201cThe Zone of Interest\u201d where her character preens in a fur coat taken from a Jewish victim. \u201cI think every other actor would try to move the audience, so they have an understanding of this person,\u201d he said. \u201cBut Sandra plays her as a woman without any depth or real feelings \u2014 because she is not trying for a second to be vain.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe is always aware that what she is doing is in service of something bigger,\u201d Simons added. \u201cShe knows where she comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Born in the small town of Friedrichroda when it was still part of East Germany, H\u00fcller was 11 when the Berlin Wall fell, and developed an interest in acting while watching American television, including \u201cThe A-Team\u201d and \u201cMacGyver.\u201d After finishing secondary school, she moved to Berlin and enrolled in an acting school heavily influenced by Stanislavski\u2019s acting method. (\u201cI don\u2019t actually know what that means,\u201d she said matter-of-factly. \u201cI skipped all the theory courses.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n H\u00fcller \u201creally, really didn\u2019t like living in Berlin,\u201d she said, and after graduating, she left the city to join the permanent acting ensemble of the state-funded theater in Jena, near her hometown, then theaters in Basel, Switzerland; Munich; and Bochum.<\/p>\n In the past two decades, she has built a reputation as one of Germany\u2019s most inventive stage actors. The country\u2019s state-funded system, in which theaters hire performers as permanent employees, allowed H\u00fcller a steady income and, she said, taught her the importance of humility and teamwork.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a community,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you see your dresser every day for years, you can\u2019t just throw things in front of her.\u201d She has applied a similar philosophy to choosing her film roles, explaining that she only worked with directors who allowed for a collaborative approach, and \u201cdon\u2019t turn actors into objects or test subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n This philosophy explains her ambivalent view of her current situation. H\u00fcller said she was horrified that reporters had tried contacting her family and school classmates to talk about her. \u201cPeople believe you belong to everyone, or you have a duty to the public,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\u2019t control it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n