Marthe Keller

Marthe Keller born 28 January 1945 Basel Switzerland is a Swiss actress and opera director She studied ballet as a child but stopped after a skiing accident at age 16 She changed to acting and worked in Berlin at the Schiller Theatre and the Berliner Ensemble Kellers earliest film appearances were in Funeral in Berlin 1966 uncredited and the German film Wilder Reiter GmbH 1967 She appeared in a series of French films in the 1970s including Un cave 1971 La raison du plus fou 1973 and Toute une vie And Now My Love 1974 Her most famous American film appearances are her Golden Globenominated performance as Dustin Hoffmans girlfriend in Marathon Man and her performance as a femme fatale Arab terrorist who leads an attack on the Super Bowl in Black Sunday both of them were illfated characters at the climax of each film Keller also acted with William Holden in the 1978 Billy Wilder film Fedora She appeared alongside Al Pacino in the auto racing film Bobby Deerfield and subsequently the two of them were involved in a relationship Since then Keller has worked more steadily in European cinema compared to American movies Her later films include Dark Eyes with Marcello Mastroianni In 2001 Keller appeared in a Broadway adaptation of Abby Manns play Judgment at Nuremberg as Mrs Bertholt the role played by Marlene Dietrich in the 1961 Stanley Kramer film version She was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress for this performance In addition to her work in film and theatre Keller has developed a career in classical music as a speaker and opera director She has performed the speaking role of Joan of Arc in the oratorio Jeanne dArc au Bûcher of Arthur Honegger on several occasions with conductors such as Seiji Ozawa and Kurt Masur She has recorded the role for Deutsche Grammophon with Ozawa DG 429 4122 Keller has also recited the spoken part in Igor Stravinskys Perséphone She has performed classical music melodramas for speaker and piano in recital The Swiss composer Michael Jarrell wrote the melodrama Cassandre after the novel of Christa Wolf for Keller who gave the world premiere in 1994 Kellers first production as an opera director was Dialogues des Carmélites for Opéra National du Rhin in 1999 This production subsequently received a semistaged performance in London that year She has also directed Lucia di Lammermoor for Washington National Opera and for Los Angeles Opera Her directorial debut at the Metropolitan Opera was in a 2004 production of Don Giovanni Keller has a son Alexandre born 1971 from her relationship with Philippe de Broca Description above from the Wikipedia article Marthe Keller licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia