Birgit Doll

Birgit Doll (9 March 1956 – 26 October 2015) was an Austrian actress of stage, screen and television and theatre director. She made her professional theatre debut at the age of 20 and won the Kainz Medal in 1992 for her performance of Libussa and the Nestroy Theatre Prize in 2000 for portraying Martha in Edward Albee's Wer hat Angst vor Virginia Woolf. Doll earned the Best Actress Award at the 1979 Bavarian Film Awards and the Best Actress Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1980 for her role as Marianne of the film Tales from the Vienna Woods.

Biography On 9 March 1958, Doll was born in Vienna. When she was 19, Doll received her first professional theatrial engagement at the Salzburger Landestheater when she was aged 20, and went on to portray roles at Vienna's Volkstheater. for which she received one of Austria's most prestigious theatre accolades,

She worked extensively in film and television. Doll portrayed the lead role of Marianne opposite Helmut Qualtinger in the 1979 Maximilian Schell adaption of the film Tales from the Vienna Woods.

At the 2002 Literatur im März, she partook in a staged reading of Ich raum auf! about women in the intervening years of the Second World War. Doll was a leading role in the jazz opera Fear Death by Water (Fürchte den Tod im Wasser) by composer and jazz musician Franz Koglmann in mid-2003. She was theatre director of the plays Hamlet (2004), Meisterklasse (2005) The Merchant of Venice (2008), A Midsummer Night's Dream (2009), M. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran, Falstaff, and Tales from the Vienna Woods.

Death

Doll suffered a severe stroke and died of complications on 26 October 2015 at age 59.

Legacy

The correspondent of Der Spiegel wrote of Doll: "Birgit Doll had an extraordinary stage presence, which made the Viennese-born one of the most important figures on the Austrian theater scene." Margarete Affenzeller, writing for Der Standard, said the actress "was never the Gretchen or Julia type as an actress. She was always drawn towards a Nora or Medea. She felt more connected to the strong female characters." Die Presse Barbara Petsch said of her "She was an intellectual, even if she appeared on stage and in films mostly as a woman with a strong soul."