Brigitte Mira

Biography

Brigitte Mira (20 April 1910 – 8 March 2005) was a German actress. She worked in both theater and film, often with Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Brigitte Mira's mother was German and her father was Jewish Russian. During the Nazi dictatorship, Mira took part in the propaganda series Liese und Miese. She played Miese (germ. bad one)--the bad role model according to Nazi ideology that listened to enemy radio stations and stockpiled rationed food. But her acting skills turned the "bad" character she portrayed into a likeable one. The series was soon cancelled for being counter productive. The propaganda directors did not know that Mira was half-Jewish. Even though she insisted on her naivete as a young woman and the fact she had to hide her identity, she was criticized later by some for taking part in these ads at all. Even if Mira was born in Hamburg she early on moved to Berlin and through her TV work came to embody the typical Berlin sense of humor. Notable performances include Emmi Kurowski in Fear Eats the Soul (1974), a role for which she won a German Film Award. In the 1980s Mira achieved another big success with the television series Drei Damen vom Grill.