Biography:

Monica Bielenstein was born in 1948 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where her Swiss parents had emigrated in 1935. While her father was a diplomat in East Germany, she studied acting at the Ernst Busch Academy for Performing Arts in Berlin from 1966 to 1970. Her acting debuts were at the Maxim Gorki Theater and Theater der Freundschaft in Berlin; she has also performed at the Berliner Kammerspiele (1980) and Tribüne Berlin (1993).

Bielenstein has acted in films for both cinema and television. One of her first roles was in the East German historic movie Schüsse unterm Galgen, and she played Ella, one of the female leads, in Iris Gusner’s Alle meine Mädchen. After moving to West Germany in 1980, she worked increasingly in television. Hers is also the German voice used for dubbing many international stars, including Ellen Barkin, Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton, Grace Kelly, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd and Emma Thompson. Since 1988, Bielenstein has worked as a dubbing director and written dubbing scripts.

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