Leonie Benesch is accustomed to moving between countries, languages, and worlds – both fictional and actual. Almost two decades into her career, she finds herself among the same rarefied multilingual elite as Christoph Waltz, Nina Hoss and Diane Kruger: German-speaking actors who shift effortlessly between Hollywood and Europe.
She is also the most famous German redhead since Boris Becker. Fellow freckled actor Jessica Chastain has often spoken about her pigmentation landing her “old-fashioned” or period roles. Benesch knows just how that feels.
“I don’t know if it’s my face or my hair, but people love to put me in period stuff,” Benesch says. “People always say: ‘Oh, your face looks like it could be from anywhere.’ I’ve been very happy over the last two years. I’m actually getting roles that are set in modern times.”
Having toured the awards circuit with the Oscar-nominated September 5 – a fine drama about the Black September attacks on the 1972 Olympics – earlier this year, she has returned to her home continent for the taut medical thriller, Late Shift.
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In Petra Volpe’s film, Benesch, also so good in the recent The Teachers’ Lounge, plays Floria, a devoted surgical nurse in Switzerland, powering through a demanding night shift in an understaffed ward. Her 26 patients range from an elderly man fearfully awaiting a diagnosis to a well-heeled private patient demanding herbal tea. Closing credits warn viewers about the worsening global staffing crisis in the profession.
“I’ve always been slightly hesitant about that sort of campaigning behind a film,” admits Benesch, “I’m always a little suspicious when someone has a message they wanted to get across. Having said that, I also really appreciate it when it’s done well. Petra Volpe wanted to shine a light on what it means to be a nurse in an underfunded health system. She’s been very open about it. I’m actually quite grateful because she opened my eyes to making those sorts of films now.”
Volpe’s gripping drama required a considerable amount of homework for Benesch, an actor who is frequently praised for her technical precision. Before production began, she shadowed nurses in Zurich throughout their demanding shifts.
“We filmed in January, after a long period of work in Belgium and Vienna,” she says. “When I arrived in Zurich, I was quite tired, which actually made sense because that’s often the mental and physical state of healthcare workers. I focused a lot on the physical aspects – learning the choreography of preparing medications, putting in IVs, moving the blood pressure wagon, the computer systems, all the small details.
“But I underestimated how emotionally exhausting it would be. I found myself having quite a few big cries after filming because, even though it’s fiction, the experience was very real. I usually don’t take work home emotionally, but this time I did.”
To prepare, she shadowed Swiss nurses for a week, observing every gesture, every measured step.
“I did five shifts. Obviously, I was not allowed to do anything other than make tea, but that was absolutely invaluable. It was quite a stark contrast, going from doing press in LA and the Oscars and that whole game to then being in a hospital shadowing nurses. It was brilliant for me. I was especially interested in their movements and the way they switch codes – how they speak distantly, yet warmly, to patients, maintaining that professional facade. It was fascinating.”
What she learned there was not only useful, but political: the fragility of healthcare systems, even in wealthy European nations.
“The biggest shock was realising how broken health systems are globally. I shadowed nurses in Switzerland – one of the richest countries – and it was still tough,” Benesch says. “I lived in the UK for eight years, so I know about the NHS struggles, but it’s the same everywhere. It’s incredible cognitive dissonance when people applaud nurses, but political systems won’t fight for better wages or working conditions.”
The gendered dimension of the labour was equally thought-provoking.
“Nursing is to this day a woman’s job,” says the actor. “Eighty per cent of people in this profession are women. Of course, they are overlooked, underpaid and underappreciated. But it’s just so stupid. I feel like it blows my mind because we all rely on this. The first, and usually the last, person to talk to us, to touch our body on this earth, is usually a nurse.”
Benesch grew up mostly in Tübingen, a German city southwest of Stuttgart. An early fascination with Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean led her to pursue acting with determination.
“When I wanted to become an actor around 11 or 12, I had moved a lot and felt like an outsider – maybe because of my red hair and being different,” she recalls. “You pick up quite quickly as a kid, if you move around a lot, the horror of having to leave a place that is familiar. But at the same time, there is the excitement of being able to really invent yourself a little bit in a new place.
“I had a strong desire to be seen and admired. Acting felt like a way to be noticed. Over time, my motivation shifted. Now, after 17 years in the profession, I value storytelling for its power to contribute to societal discussions. Of course, there’s still a lot of fun and entertainment in it, but that’s the core of why I do this.”
She performed in a children’s circus before moving on to the prestigious Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin, and later, three years at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She had yet to graduate when she landed the role of Greta Overbeck on Tom Tykwer’s popular Weimar-era crime drama, Babylon Berlin – replete with a hefty arc about radicalisation and class struggle.
“There were little protests on set when they killed me off at the end of season three,” she laughs. “People held up signs. ‘Let her live!’ I was very happy about that.”
As her cut-glass English pronunciation indicates, she remained in the UK for a time, appearing in The Crown as Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark, sister to Prince Philip, and – alongside David Tennant’s Phileas Fogg – as the intrepid Abigail in the BBC miniseries Around the World in 80 Days. She credits BBC Radio 4 for helping her to perfect her received pronunciation.
“I left Guildhall a few months early for Babylon Berlin,” she says. “I stayed in London for about five more years because I loved it and wanted to be around for potential auditions. But after Around the World in 80 Days and Covid hit, I spent six months in Berlin and realised how much I loved it here: it’s cheaper, and many friends are here. The combination of Brexit and Covid made me decide to settle in Berlin for now. But who knows what the future holds?”
![Leonie Benesch: 'Eighty per cent of people in [nursing] are women. Of course, they are overlooked, underpaid and underappreciated'](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BULT3MVIMJG3FEBYMGJ6J3TZXE.jpg?auth=63bf542f2a5f48d20d7f9c2af1311af6350613a9a66c17c6b0d9cc76e41a43ba&width=800&height=480)
Benesch was 17 years old when Michael Haneke cast her in the Palme d’Or-winning The White Ribbon. Critics immediately took note and credited her performance as bringing something “gentler and more endearing than anything Haneke has ever shown before”.
“Starting with something so high-profile is a blessing and a challenge,” she says. “I remember [costar] Susanne Lothar – may she rest in peace – saying: ‘Don’t get used to this; most sets aren’t like this.’ I thought that was the norm at first: working with Michael Haneke, going to set, having all the time in the world to prepare. I thought: ‘Why are we not at the Oscars with every project?’ So it was quite a brutal wake-up. It set the bar high, which keeps me motivated. But I think I’m doing okay.”
The international success of The Teachers’ Lounge, İlker Çatak’s nervy thriller about a dedicated teacher whose attempt to resolve a theft at her school spirals into a tense moral crisis, was a pleasant and game-changing surprise. The film failed to find a distributor for almost a year after it was completed, but it went on to get a nomination for best international feature at the 2024 Oscars.
“I think it was at Berlinale, I realised that this film was big,” she says, remembering its buzzy debut at the Berlin Film Festival. “That was the first time there was an opportunity for word of mouth and people going to screenings together. We were suddenly sold out. I remember my agent saying: Brazil loves your film. And we did not expect any of that.”
Night Shift is in cinemas from August 1st
