Diane Kruger (German: [diˈaːnə ˈkʁuːɡɐ], née Heidkrüger; born 15 July 1976) is a German actress. She is a former model-turned-actress who, early in her film career, gained worldwide recognition and received the Trophée Chopard from the Cannes Film Festival.
Kruger was born in Algermissen, West Germany. She was trained from a young age to become a ballerina and studied at the Royal Academy in Hanover and the Royal Ballet School in London. She won the 1992 Elite Model Look national contest and signed with Elite Model Management, working in Paris and then New York. In the late 1990s, she left modelling and transitioned to acting.
Kruger became known for her roles in films such as Helen in the epic war film Troy (2004), Dr. Abigail Chase in the heist film National Treasure (2004) and its 2007 sequel, Bridget von Hammersmark in Quentin Tarantino's war film Inglourious Basterds (2009), and Gina in the psychological thriller film Unknown (2011). She also starred as Detective Sonya Cross in the FX crime drama series The Bridge (2013–14). In 2017, she made her German-language debut in Fatih Akin's In the Fade, for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. In 2019, Kruger starred in the spy-thriller The Operative with Martin Freeman.
Diane Heidkrüger was born on 15 July 1976 in Algermissen, Lower Saxony, West Germany. Her mother, Maria-Theresa, was employed as a bank clerk. Her father, Hans-Heinrich, formerly employed as a cinema projectionist, was a computer scientist. One of her grandmothers was Polish. She was brought up in Algermissen with her younger brother, Stefan.
When she was two years old, her mother took the initiative to enrol her in after-school ballet dance classes. Kruger envisioned becoming a ballerina. She practised ballet dancing, whether entrechats or barre workouts, from a young age at the Freese-Baus Ballettschule in Hildesheim. When Kruger was between eight and nine years old, the director of the Freese-Baus Ballettschule, Rainer Baus, used a photograph of her to illustrate a promotional poster for the school. Baus believed that Kruger did not necessarily aspire to pursue a career as a professional ballet dancer, although he added that she "incontestably had talent". She grew up in a deeply Catholic German family, and attended Catholic school. She said that to "make money" from ages 10 to 12, she would attend funeral services, standing near the coffins with a candle in her hand, thus characterising herself as a "professional mourner". Kruger received a "rigid" Catholic education.
Kruger took additional dance classes at the Royal Academy of Hanover, where British teachers came to teach, Kruger said. To teach her the value of individual autonomy and to improve her English, her mother sent her to London, United Kingdom, through student exchange programmes in dance. She thus studied at the Royal Ballet School in London, where she attended intensive training independently every summer from the age of 11. Kruger was passionate about Romy Schneider and Paris ever since her parents' honeymoon in that capital. She described her parents as "not poor but" belonging to the "lower-middle class".
Her father, frequently absent, had an alcohol addiction. Her mother left him, taking with her 13-year-old Diane and her brother. She then found herself responsible for her brother, while her mother worked at the bank. Kruger remembered a difficult family situation due to her father's disease, during which her mother had to face the hardships alone. Kruger said that she perceived her mother's strength of character, but as the eldest sibling, she also "definitely saw her doubts and fears and her struggles as a woman".
Her parents divorced when she was 13. Being on stage and dancing enabled Kruger to express her "emotions" as she lived in a tumultuous environment; still, from puberty onwards, she doubted her ability to reach the prima ballerina status. A knee injury put an end to her ballet plans, obligating her to resume her education by returning to her "strict" Catholic school. She earned her pocket money, which her mother could not give her, by working mornings delivering newspapers during the school year, and doing odd jobs during the summer.
Kruger, then 15 years old, entered the Elite Model Look national competition in 1992 in Hamburg and won first prize, the Look of the Year Modelling Award. The reward was an "entry ticket" into professional modelling from Elite Model Management, as well as a Vespa. She then represented Germany at the Elite's Look of the Year competition, held in New York that same year and hosted by Donald Trump. Kruger moved to Paris, France, on her own at the age of 15. At Elite Model Management, she requested to have her test shoots done based on what she had seen in a magazine. She signed with Elite modelling agency.
Despite her relatively short stature for a model, Kruger rapidly made a name for herself, being hired for advertisements by Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Salvatore Ferragamo, Giorgio Armani, Jil Sander, Christian Dior, Burberry and Louis Vuitton; runway shows from Marc Jacobs, D&G, and Sonia Rykiel; and appearances on the cover of Vogue Paris, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan to her modelling repertoire. In the 1990s, Kruger lived near the Tuileries in Paris, in a building intended for models, rented by the agency. She went "from photo shoots to fashion shows and from cocktails to parties, from the Bains Douches to Queens" during a period that was "joyful". She met German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld during a photo shoot for Elle magazine at her apartment on rue de l'Université in Paris. Kruger became and remained close to Lagerfeld.
Kruger subsequently moved to the United States and settled in New York. In 1997, at the age of 21, she felt bored after five years of modelling and, in conjunction with a romantic disappointment with the man she was dating, left New York. She returned to Paris and gave up her apartment while she was "at the height of her modelling career", wrote Noam Friedlander of The Daily Telegraph. As she gradually stepped away from modelling in the late 1990s, a new era began, saying: "You had to be very thin, the dresses were dreary".
Kruger was 17 years old and not yet fluent in French when filmmaker Luc Besson auditioned her for a role in The Fifth Element. Although she was not selected for a role, Besson nonetheless advised her to enrol at the Cours Florent drama school.
Back in Paris, Kruger met French actor Guillaume Canet in 1999, who encouraged her to take a theatre course to assess her abilities as a potential actress, she later said. She then enrolled at the Cours Florent drama school, where she would remain for the next two years. Kruger discovered her calling at the Cours Florent. Being an actress was the next apparent step, allowing her to do more concrete and tangible work than modelling while continuing to travel.
She made her film debut in 2002, opposite Dennis Hopper and Christopher Lambert in The Piano Player, a TV film by Jean-Pierre Roux. The same year, she also starred in her then-husband's directorial debut, Mon Idole.
She played Julie Wood in 2003's Michel Vaillant and Lisa in Wicker Park (2004), alongside Josh Hartnett and Rose Byrne. One of her more high-profile roles to date is her portrayal of Helen of Sparta in Wolfgang Petersen's epic Troy. In 2004, Kruger starred with Nicolas Cage and Sean Bean (who co-starred with her in Troy) in the film National Treasure, going on to appear in films Joyeux Noël (2005) and Copying Beethoven (2006). She reprised her role as Dr. Abigail Chase in National Treasure: Book of Secrets, released in December 2007.
In 2009, Kruger co-starred as a German actress turned Allied spy in Quentin Tarantino's film Inglourious Basterds. In December 2009, she announced the nominations of the 67th Golden Globe Awards and also picked up nominations from the Screen Actors' Guild for Best Supporting Actress and Outstanding Performance by a Cast of a Motion Picture for her role in Inglourious Basterds.