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Maria Hofstätter has always distinguished herself by her constant search for interesting roles, for herself and for the audience. Every role, for her, must be a chance to give vent to one’s feelings, safe in the certainty that someone will be listening. Great protagonist, together with Ulrich Seidl, of the 2001 and 2012 Venice Film Festival.
The power of feelings
Being awarded in Gijon, Graz, Berlin and Vienna and yet not wanting to be popular. The artistic talent of Maria Hofstätter, versatile stage and film actress, John Waters’ favourite actress, also passes through this sort of mantra that has characterised her since 1983: ‘Better the anonymity of the big city than the popularity of the small town, especially if you are an actor’. How could she be wrong?
Cabaret
It was precisely in 1983, on the stage of a cabaret theatre in Linz, her home town, that she began what will always be described as a career born ‘almost’ by chance. This famous entertaining evening, which she called “life-changing”, led her to more and more famous stages and to getting to know a legend such as Josef Hader, future partner in several successful films. All this as a self-taught, high school student in the Upper Austrian capital and, above all, without any desire to be on that stage. The right intuition will be to understand the cathartic power of being able to bring on stage anger and feelings otherwise difficult to repress, with the certainty of being heard, halfway between the Stanislavsky method and Goffman’s ‘psychodrama’. The self-awareness of Maria Hofstätter, who grew up in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Linz, thus changes abruptly: from now on she will long to go on stage. Without, however, limiting herself to cabaret.
Success
Since 1995 director of the Projekttheater Vorarlberg in Feldkirch, together with her colleague Dietmar Nigsch, Maria Hofstätter never forgot her first love, theatre, performing not only in Austria, but also in Germany, and soon becoming an international star. Her real success came in 2001, the year of the release of Ulrich Seidl‘s Dog Days, awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In this drama, made up of loneliness and dazzling heat, the hitchhiker played by Maria Hofstätter won the hearts of the critics and, above all, of the jury of the Gijon Film Festival, which awarded her the well-deserved Best Actress prize.
This can also be considered the beginning of a successful collaboration with Seidl, who would direct Hofstätter five more times, one of which at the Berlin Volksbühne. Worthy of note, in this respect, is the constant presence of the pious Anna Maria (Hofstätter) in the Paradise trilogy, Seidl’s second Silver Lion in Venice (thanks to the second chapter, Paradise: Faith) and, above all, Österreichischer Filmpreis 2014 for Best Actress in a Leading Role to the very performer of the religious medical assistant.
Audience
Always seeking a certain freedom, since being recognised on the street can actually be a problem, Maria Hofstätter continues to live in her Viennese flat to which she moved as a student. Her need for freedom is matched, in terms of importance, by her search for interesting roles, for herself and for the audience. But that’s not all: remembering what happened in 1983, every role, for her, must be used to give vent to her feelings, safe in the certainty that someone will be listening.
This explains, perhaps, the interesting choice to place particular value on the intensity and depth of each character. The roles in the subsequent films Wild Mouse (again with Hader and directed by him in 2017), Cops (Stefan A. Lukacs, 2018) and Ugly (Juri Rechinsky, 2017) are empirical proof of Maria Hofstätter’s way of working, without losing sight of the freedom she holds so dear.
Memorable characters
It will be in 2017, with Lars Montag’s interesting Sex, Pity and Loneliness, that the role of “second violinist with a licence to kill” will slowly become more and more in her blood, finding, three years later, a renewed confirmation in the drama Fox in a Hole by Arman T. Riahi. Here, in the role of Elisabeth Berger, a visionary art teacher in a juvenile prison, Maria will give life to an iconic and unconventional character, spectacularly teaming up with the main character, Professor Hannes Fuchs (Alexander Petrovic). A Romy and the second Österreichischer Filmpreis for Best Actress in a Leading Role are right up there to reaffirm the greatness of her acting performance.
As an expression ‘made in Hofstätter’, consciously escaping the social control of her home village turned out to be the right choice and, moreover, gave us, the audience, a natural talent and a person, as far as possible, even more interesting to get to know and admire. Perhaps anonymously, as she likes it.