Senta Berger: She speaks openly about money in the film industry
Senta Berger (77, "Under Suspicion") is one of Germany's most popular actresses. A world star who worked in Hollywood and filmed with people like John Houston, Orson Welles, Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner, Alain Delon and Marcello Mastroianni. In over 100 films and TV series was the character actress in the center. There remains more material than the loyal sympathy of the audience. "The more money you have, the less important it becomes," she explains in a recent interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ).
"I shy the responsibility"
Although her husband, director Michael Verhoeven (80), would now say, "But Senta, you are very naive, the more money you have, the more you want to have." But that's not the case with her. "I shy away from the responsibility of having more money, simply because I do not want to deal with it too much."
She comes from the simplest Viennese circumstances and had 1957 at the age of 16 years, a first role in the film "The Lindenwirtin from the Danube beach". The fee was: "80 shillings (5.81 euros) per day." It was ten days of shooting. "During the drama school I shot with Yul Brynner and got 3000 shillings (218 Euros), as much as my father brought home in two months."
Sente Berger does not have any existential fears
When she was just over 20, she got a really handsome fee for her big role in "The Waltz King": "For the salary of 40,000 marks (equivalent to 20,507 euros) I bought an apartment in Vienna, a new building, with a pink tiled bathroom, the flat still exists, and we use it when we are in Vienna, too seldom, that your "energetic, practical Viennese kinship" is always advisable This is of course unthinkable, "unless you are really on the dog".
She does not have existential fears like so many other actors, on the other hand she can remember a conversation with her friend colleague Christiane Hörbiger (80). The two stars, "when we were in their early / mid-50s jokingly, but not quite, said: 'If nothing else works, then we'll go and clean' cause that could not happen! '". Actresses could "clean very well" because they are "aesthetics". "We have a look, we see the dust, we learn texts while cleaning."
She knows that she "was lucky to be able to live in a reasonably secure way, with thirsty ways". She also knows the sleepless nights when, for example, in 1982 with the joint film production company Sentana, which has since been overwritten by the two sons Simon (46) and Luca Verhoeven (40), the award-winning successful film of her husband, "The White Rose", even had to finance. "But we had the house here (in Grünwald near Munich - the Red.) For all financings, the house was always the pledge."
The actress wants to be there for her grandchildren
Of course, she also knows about the different pay of female and male actors. "As a producer, I've always made sure that women and men get the same fee," she tells the SZ. "As an actress, however, I know the injustices of the pay gap of many colleagues."
Basically, it could not only be about Gage and more and more Gage. "The money goes away, the shame stays on." It's like this: When I hear what one person deserves with a movie I despise, it pats off on me, and then I carry my nose up, which is a terrible haughtiness but the only one I do. "
In her life, other things are more important now: "I have failed to properly accompany my three grandchildren, I worked so much until two years ago that I did not see them growing up properly, and I do not want that to be a granny Resi, as my mother has been to my children. "
