Vicky Krieps

Vicky Krieps (born 4 October 1983) is a Luxembourgish-German actress. She has appeared in a number of American, Luxembourgish, French and German productions. Her breakout role was in the period film Phantom Thread (2017).

Her early films include Hanna (2011), Two Lives (2012) and A Most Wanted Man (2014), and has since starred in The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018), The Last Vermeer (2019), Old (2021), and The Survivor (2021). She earned acclaim for her performances in Bergman Island (2021), Hold Me Tight (2021), and Corsage (2022). Her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Corsage earned her the European Film Award for Best Actress.

Early life and education
Krieps was born in Hesperange, the daughter of a Luxembourgish father, who managed a film distribution company, and German mother. Her father, Bob Krieps, is the director general of the Ministry of Culture of Luxembourg, the former director of Sacem Luxembourg, and the former president of the Luxembourg Film Fund. Several of her films have been funded by the Luxembourg Film Fund, which is supervised by the Ministry of Culture, which then decides which films will be funded by state subsidies. Her paternal grandfather, Robert Krieps, was a politician, war-time member of the Luxembourg Resistance, and Luxembourg's Minister of Justice, National Education and Culture in the 1970s and 1980s.

Krieps had her first acting experiences at the Lycée de Garçons secondary school in Luxembourg City, receiving training at the Conservatoire de Luxembourg. Rather than enrolling in one of the drama schools, she participated in a social project at the primary school of a South African township near Knysna. This confirmed her resolve to study acting, with the goal of performing on theatre stages.

Krieps attended Zurich University of the Arts, while gathering acting experience at Schauspielhaus Zürich.

Career
Krieps had numerous roles in Luxembourgish films and television series, before starring in foreign productions, such as Hanna (2011), Rommel (2012), Before the Winter Chill (2013) and Elly Beinhorn: Solo Flight, a biopic about the German aviation pioneer Elly Beinhorn. She also had supporting roles roles in Anonymous (2011), and A Most Wanted Man (2014).

She had her career breakthrough starring opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in the period film Phantom Thread (2017). The film revolves around the romantic relationship between an older man, a fashion designer, and a younger woman. Receiving critical acclaim for her role, Dan Jolin of Empire stated that Krieps "can hold her own opposite a titan like Day-Lewis", while David Edelstein of Vulture wrote that she is "bewitchingly lucent, her face just masklike enough to make our sudden awareness of all her dark thoughts a shock." The film received six Academy Award nominations including for Best Picture.

Krieps played the magazine publisher in The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018), and Minna Holberg in the drama film The Last Vermeer (2019). She portrayed the morally compromised Alsatian interpreter in the 2020 television series Das Boot, and subsequently in the second series. In 2021, Krieps starred in M. Night Shyamalan's horror film Old, and in the drama film Bergman Island (2021). That same year, she starred in the HBO film The Survivor and the Netflix film Beckett. She starred in Mathieu Amalric's drama film Hold Me Tight (2021) which premiered at the 74th Cannes Film Festival. Susannah Gruder of IndieWire praised her performance writing, "Krieps, who delivers a disarmingly vulnerable, yet understated performance that keeps the film grounded. Her wispy elegance is tempered by a clumsy charm as she lovingly strokes her daughter’s hair, or floats through the world in her newly-solo life".

The following year, she played Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the historical drama Corsage which she also served as an executive producer. The film premiered at the 75th Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. She won the Un Certain Regard Best Performance Prize. Jessica Kiang of Variety praised the casting describing it as "the best showcase for [Krieps]' defiantly peculiar charisma since Phantom Thread. For her performance she received the European Film Award for Best Actress. She continued to act in the acclaimed drama films More Than Ever (2022) and Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert (2023). She played Anne of Austria in the action adventure film The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023).

In 2023, she starred in the western drama The Dead Don't Hurt directed by Viggo Mortensen. The film premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. Krieps is described as being the true central figure of the revisionist Western. Frank Schek of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Krieps delivers yet another astonishing turn in a career that already seems destined for greatness. Her Vivienne — warm yet steely, courageous yet vulnerable, fierce yet loving — is a complex, fascinating character who’s compelling every moment she’s onscreen."

Personal life
Krieps moved to Berlin, Germany in her early 20s. She resides in Berlin with her two children, daughter Elisa (born 2011) and son Jan-Noah (born 2015), and her partner, the German actor Jonas Laux.

When asked about the #MeToo movement, Krieps said: "Maybe it's very European, but I always see both sides. I feel very sorry for the people who have been harassed, but I also feel very sorry for the people who have lived a life where they have been harassing people. You cannot tell me any of these people are really happy, it's more like a disease. So I really think it's important for everyone to wake up. That would be my hashtag: #WakeUp."

In April 2021, Krieps was part of the controversial campaign #allesdichtmachen ("close everything down"), which featured 50 German-speaking actors making fun of Germany's protective measures against COVID-19. In her video, Krieps says, among other things, that acting helped her to deal with her fear of people. "During this time, we all learned how good it is to finally get away from it all. To alienate, not always having to let others get close to you. Above all, you don't know if the people you meet are washed." The campaign, released when Germany had more than 80,000 deaths related to COVID, was highly criticized as being "tasteless" and "cringe-worthy", but it also received support from members of the far-right and COVID-deniers, who were rejoicing to find material supporting their own criticism of the authorities' handling of the pandemic.

When Krieps was questioned on Instagram about the alleged abuser in the cast of her film Corsage who was kept in the film after director Marie Kreutzer was informed about him, she said: "So, a feminist film made by two women should be discarded because of the misconduct of a male colleague? (Second question) Who exactly is being harmed by this?" Krieps was also an executive producer on Corsage. The case became public in Austria in June 2022, when Austrian director Katharina Mückstein shared an Instagram story that generated a lot of media attention and sparked a new wave of the #MeToo Movement in Austria.