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Name: Katrin Cartlidge
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Date of Birth:
May 15, 1961
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Place of Birth:
London, England, UK
Mini-bio:
Best known as one of Mike Leigh's '90s repertory of actors, Katrin Cartlidge also made her intense, versatile talent felt in several key European films of the 1990s and early 2000s. Her sterling caree... read morer was cut short, however, when she passed away in 2002 at the age of 41.Born to an orphaned British father and German-Jewish refugee mother, Cartlidge was raised in a bohemian London household. With her ability to read hampered by undiagnosed dyslexia, she was relegated to remedial classes at school, souring her on academics. More inspired by her trips to see avant-garde theater, Cartlidge began to audition for plays in her teens. Although without formal training, she joined the Royal Court Youth Theatre, and served as an apprentice in London and Edinburgh's fringe theater. Despite making her official London stage debut at 18, Cartlidge supported herself during her late teens by working as an art school model and as a dresser at London's Royal Court Theater. She was finally able to earn her living by acting when she landed a role on Channel 4's popular soap opera Brookside in 1982. During her six years on the show, she also became a regular stage presence at the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre. Even after she moved to films, Cartlidge continued to work in theater, including appearing off-Broadway in the 2001 British import Mnemonic.Cartlidge first caught Leigh's eye with her multi-role performance in a 1985 Royal National Theatre play. He offered Cartlidge work on some TV ads five years later, but she turned him down. The director eventually cast her in his 1993 film Naked. Although she had made her movie debut in Channel 4's Sacred Hearts in 1984, it was Naked that officially launched her into the international art cinema stratosphere. Through Leigh's famously long and rigorous pre-production process, Cartlidge created wry, druggie, Goth Sophie, a sexual free spirit who seems to be an apt carnal match for David Thewlis' drifter Johnny before she falls victim to the masculine sadism embodied by Thewlis and Greg Cruttwell's cruel yuppie. A brutal and sometimes mordantly hilarious examination of contemporary anomie, the film earned accolades at the Cannes Film Festival, while Cartlidge garnered the award for European Actress of the Year and the European Press Best Actress prize. She followed Naked with a starring role in Milcho Manchevski's drama Before the Rain (1994); featuring Cartlidge as a photo editor torn between her London husband and her Macedonian photographer lover, the movie examined the conflicts plaguing the newly independent republics formed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and became the first Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee from Macedonia. After appearing in several more projects, including the imaginative Antoine de Saint-Exupéry biopic Saint-Ex (1996), Cartlidge solidified her international status with a supporting role in Lars von Trier's landmark drama of faith and self-sacrifice, Breaking the Waves (1996). In a change of pace from her prior uninhibited characters, the actress portrayed a repressed, uptight sister-in-law bent on protecting Emily Watson's Bess from her sexually degrading, ill-fated quest to cure her paralyzed husband. Cartlidge returned to the Leigh orbit to co-star with Lynda Steadman in the eponymous Career Girls (1997). Centering on two '80s college roommates who have an uneasy '90s reunion, the movie showcased Cartlidge's range and sharp humor as her Hannah evolves from a jittery, angry student seeking random wisdom from the Brontë sisters into a sleek, aggressive professional with a shade of vulnerable self-awareness. In the wake of Career Girls, Cartlidge noted that she would not be going to Hollywood because, "My breasts are too small, I have no collagen in my lips, and my eyebrows are too thick." Instead, the actress ventured into American independent films as part of the ensemble trolling Manhattan in Hi-Life (1998) and as the title character in Lodge Kerrigan's second feature, Claire Dolan (1998). Despite qualms over Claire Dolan's unvarnished view of sexuality, Cartlidge's unstinting turn as an immigrant prostitute garnered her London's Evening Standard Best Actress award. After taking on period roles with Michael Cacoyannis' film version of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in 1999 and a cameo role in Leigh's Topsy-Turvy the same year, Cartlidge went back to American indie films with Kathryn Bigelow's mystery-drama The Weight of Water (2000). Cartlidge then came as close to Hollywood filmmaking as she would ever get as one of Jack the Ripper's victims in Allen and Albert Hughes' visually flamboyant From Hell (2001). She received more attention, however, for Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land (2001), a film she had shot simultaneously. Exploring the same politically charged terrain as Before the Rain, Cartlidge's tough war correspondent was a key part of Tanovic's satiric dissection of the futile Bosnia-Serbia conflict. Nominated for Best Foreign Film, No Man's Land beat out the popular Amélie (2001) to become the first Bosnian film to win an Oscar.Cartlidge's appearance in a BBC version of Crime and Punishment in 2002 became her final project. She died suddenly of septicemia that same year. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
Katrin Cartlidge mini-bio: An intense British theater and film actress who has specialized in neurotic and or frightened woman, Katrin Cartlidge first caught the attention of the art house crowd as the junkie Sophie in Mike Leigh's "Naked" (1993). With her long brunette hair, sharp, malleable features and dancer-like comportment, the talented actress has amassed an impressive list of credits and has been fortunate to work with several of the late 20th Century's most gifted filmmakers, including the aforementioned Leigh, Lars von Trier, and Michael Cacoyannis. Although she has tended to excel as very contemporary characters, the stage-trained Cartlidge has proven equally at home in period films.
The youngest child of a Jewish mother whose family fled Germany in the late 1930s and a Scottish foundling jailed for his pacifist beliefs, Cartlidge began her career in the theater, first working as a dresser for actress Jill Bennett and then as a performer in fringe theater before moving to more "legit" work such as playing Juliet. She made headlines in the London tabloids when she was atypically cast as a violent schoolgirl in the premiere of the popular serial "Brookside" in 1982. After a year on the drama series, Cartlidge returned to the stage to hone her craft, making the occasional appearance on TV (e.g., "Sacred Hearts" 1984) or in film (a cameo in "Eat the Rich" 1987).
Director Mike Leigh was impressed with the actress and cast her in the breakthrough role as the bitter punk bedmate of a grungy loser (David Thewlis) in "Naked". Other roles quickly followed, including Carine Adler's short "Fever" (1994, the precursor of the director's 1997 feature "Under the Skin"), in which she played a promiscuous woman, and the Oscar-nominated foreign film "Before the Sun" (1994), as the married lover of a Macedonian-born photographer. Lars von Trier then cast her as Emily Watson's overprotective sister-in-law in "Breaking the Waves" (1996). While Watson had the showier part and thereby garnered all the acclaim, Cartlidge matched her intensity and to paraphrase Janet Maslin's The New York Times review, represented the rationality which the movie ultimately abandons.
Reteaming with Mike Leigh, Cartlidge starred as the acerbic Hannah, one of the titular "Career Girls" (1997), university chums whose reunion makes them realize where they've been and where they are. The actress then adopted an American accent to star as "Claire Dolan" (1998; released in the USA in 2000), a working girl who attempts to leave behind that way of life in order to have a child. Cartlidge, who was in virtually every scene of the film, bravely undertook this complex and contradictory role and delivered an astonishing tour de force that was nothing short of brilliant. Abandoning contemporary times, the actress played Varya in Michael Cacoyannis' long-awaited filming of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" and then made a cameo appearance as the owner of a Parisian brothel frequented by Sir Arthur Sullivan in Leigh's "Topsy-Turvy" (both 1999).
Born: on 05/15/1961 in London, England
Died:07-NOV-02.
Job Titles:Actor, Art model, Dresser
Significant Others
Companion: . Cartlidge lives with an actor she has declined to identify
Milestones
1979 London stage debut as Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet"
1979 Stage acting debut in "One Rule" at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith
1982 TV series debut as a troubled schoolgirl on the debut episode of the popular British series "Brookside"
1985 Acted in the British TV-movie "Sacred Hearts" (Channel Four)
1987 Feature film debut, "Eat the Rich"
1993 First major film role as the brooding Goth Sophie in "Naked", directed by Mike Leigh
1994 Played featured role in Milcho Manchevski's "Before the Rain"
1994 US TV-movie debut, "Nobody's Children" (USA Network)
1996 Had major supporting role as Emily Watson's repressed sister-in-law in Lars von Trier's "Breaking the Waves"
1997 Teamed again with Mike Leigh for "Career Girls"; played the acerbic Hannah
1998 Had title role of a call girl attempting to break free from her life in "Claire Dolan"; screened at Cannes; released theatrically in the USA in 2000
1999 Made cameo appearance as a Parisian brothel owner in "Topsy-Turvy". directed by Mike Leigh
1999 Portrayed Varya in Michael Cacoyannis' adaptation of "The Cherry Orchard"; released theatrically in the United Kingdom in 2000
1999 Returned to the stage in "Mnemonic" at the Riverside Studios
2000 Cast as one of the ugly stepsisters in Beeban Kidron's modern take on "Cinderella"; aired on Channel 4 on January 1
2000 Had featured role in the murder mystery "Weight of Water"
2001 Appeared on the NYC stage in "Mnemonic" with the Theatre de Complicite
2001 Played a woman who is stalked by a man she once dated in the London stage premiere of "Boy Gets Girl"
Was a nude model for art classes
Worked briefly as a dresser for actress Jill Bennett
