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Actress Corinna Seiter |
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Corinna Seiter, a German actress, screenwriter, and producer who splits
her time between Spain and Germany took time out recently in between
writing a new screenplay and taking part in the Cannes Film Festival on
the French Riviera, to talk about her life and career.
Ms. Seiter who we will simply refer to by her first name for the rest of
this interview, because for such an affable woman, this seems more
appropriate, provides us with some insight concerning the new short film
she is working on.
“It has been quite a while since I wrote my last project. I have always
enjoyed writing and I wanted to do something that is close to my heart.
I think it is something that all of us go for at certain stages in our
lives. It (the film) is about isolation, and it has a bit to do with the
whole pandemic situation. That is not going to show in the project
really. It takes place in a dystopian world that we really do not know
that much about. It is about a character who lives in that world and who
is trying to find their way between what is real and what isn’t. This
(individual) is trying to figure life out in a way, and they are trying
to be mentally well. It also has a big part about mental health as well.
I wanted to do something simpler than the technical side of it and not
very complicated. Something easy to do visually. I want something more
visual without a lot of dialogue in it. It will be more like sensations
and images. There will be a short dialogue at the end. It has more to do
about the inner dialogue that goes on in our heads when we are alone and
everything that comes with it. It has a connection as well to the
digital world; I want to say that we are trapped in right now, but this
may not be the right word. We are confronted more and more with this
digital world. It is kind of like another reality and this is coming
together in our project,” she explains.
I am still in script development. Hopefully, I will be finishing
it (soon). Then it would go into production, once we find financing.
Hopefully, I will be able to shoot it this year.
You have to put a date on it with projects, so they can actually be
done. In this case I want to do it this year, but for me the most
important thing is that it is done correctly. Of course, you will never
be one hundred percent happy, and it is always like that with art
projects, but I wanted to put the date for this year. I am also open if
it doesn’t work out and it can be filmed next year.
I started out with an idea for a short film and when I was writing and
thinking about it, I got some more ideas. I thought it could actually be
very interesting to have the short film, become a project that also
worked as a teaser for a feature film. I have some ideas for the project
that I could develop as well. They could be very interesting for a
longer project, but I personally like short, short films. I want to have
the short film be a maximum of ten minutes. Everything that is above ten
minutes I am going to put that material aside. I will then have it to
develop the feature film script. In an ideal world that would happen. I
don’t feel like I have to let go of that idea, I can write it down.”
With a passion for psychology and a gift for learning languages; she is
fluent in five, we wondered if those two loves ever came into play in
the acting part of her career.
We decided to explore if psychology might influence developing a
backstory for a character if none is provided, “Yes completely. Yes
definitely. The perfect scenario would be that when I get the script
everything is already there. You talk about writer / directors who have
developed their scripts over ten or fifteen years. They finally find the
way that everything comes together and there normally is a backstory.
They know what they want, and it is my job to do that, to be open to it
and to portray that.
At the same time, it helps you to understand the character, to
understand what they might be feeling, what they might be going through.
(It helps you) to empathize with the character, which is very important.
No matter who you are playing, a good or a bad person or something in
between, no matter what label, you have to empathize with your
character. You have to understand them and know where they are coming
from. Then I think it really helps to be interested in psychology, when
there is no backstory for (instance) if it is a character that has just
a short appearance in the project.
When we start out as actors and actresses we don’t get the main parts. I
don’t want to say smaller parts, because I think all parts are
important, but maybe it is a part that has just one line in that project
or two sentences and those are the tricky ones. It is very hard to know
what to do with it, because maybe in that case there has not been much
thought that has gone into it. You may not have the time to speak to the
director about how you imagine that person to be, because they don’t
have time for it. I think then it is important for you to create
something that works for you and have your own backstory, but to always
be flexible. Always be prepared to throw everything out of the window
and do something completely different, because it may not be what the
director has envisioned for it,” says Corinna.
Certainly, being fluent in so many languages, must open the door for
numerous opportunities, but the answer Corinna Seiter gave us, came as a
bit of a surprise, “Until now it hasn’t been that much of a factor. A
little bit yes. I have only worked in Spain, and I haven’t worked in
German productions yet. That has a lot to do with where I started out
and where I did my networking. I think that is the reason why. I haven’t
really started looking at the German market yet. I am starting this year
to get updated. I am going to do something in German as well, a short
project to have some material in German.
In Spain, the projects that I have done, were mainly in German or
English. I have played someone from Britian, I have played an American,
I have played a German. Although, my Spanish is really good, I have
never played a Spanish person. I think there are so many great actresses
in Spain, and they are all Spanish. I think it would be a little strange
for the production to say we are going to take a German woman living in
Spain and make her pretend she is Spanish.
In one way I think it helps (being fluent in several languages), but I
don’t think it helps you get more projects when you are starting out.
Maybe later, yes.”
So where did this all begin?
“I was born in Nuremburg, in Bavaria, Germany and I grew up in a small
village next to my grandparents and my cousins until I was five. When I
was five my dad got a job in Basel, Switzerland and then we moved to a
town close to France. It was different, because it was between three
countries, Switzerland, Germany and France and it was close to the Black
Forest. I lived there until I was about nineteen. I moved away and
studied in another small town in Bavaria. From there I went to Spain. To
explain why I speak so many languages, I have lived in France, Italy and
Spain several times and now I am living between Spain and Germany.
Yes definitely. I started learning French when I was thirteen or
fourteen. I lived in France for four months and that was the experience
that made me want to learn more languages. That was before we had
WhatsApp or internet on our phones. I would call my mom, maybe once a
week, because it was very expensive. I lived there for four months
without speaking German at all. That experience in forgetting some
German words and waking up suddenly the next morning and suddenly
understanding everything everybody was saying and to be able to speak
fluently, was very powerful. It was like Wow! That’s how languages work.
French helped me for Spanish and then I lost my French, and I started
learning Italian. Then the French came back, and I lost the Spanish for
a while,” she says.
As for familial creative influences, Corinna Seiter says, “No not really
and yes, a little bit. My grandma from my dad’s side wrote poetry and
she painted as well. From that side of the family, we do have this
artistic affection. My dad also when I was smaller used to write songs
for me and he would play the guitar. He also paints, but he never
pursued it as a career. I had to do some convincing that was what I
wanted to do and then just go for it.” So, what was it Corinna that drew you to Spain?
“I could say the sun, the people, the food, but it is all of that
together and more. I have always felt at home in Spain. I feel accepted.
People open their arms, and they welcome you. I felt very welcomed and
inspired. In Spain it is more like you have
your pluses and I have mine, let’s speak about something that we have in
common. Let’s speak about something that we are passionate about, and I
feel that people are quite humble in that sense. They are very open and
very interested in getting to know you.
For example, when I walk down the streets in Madrid, the feeling that I
get is just a very positive and warm feeling. People just seem happier.”
For some creatives, they start early in life and for others they are
late bloomers, Corinna tells us about the path that she took, “When I
was three years old. I went to kindergarten, and they were doing this
play. In Germany you go to kindergarten from three until you are six. No
other kids wanted to play the main character, so they asked me if I
wanted to do it. I still remember the play and it is based on a book
called I Am Me. Was about a (toy) stuffed animal, a fantasy
animal. It doesn’t really know who it is or what it is. It goes around
asking other animals, am I a horse and the horse goes, look at your hair
it is not like mine. It feels excluded from all of the other animals and
it is trying to figure out who it is. In the end it realizes that it is
different. It is special and it is okay like that. It is a beautiful
children’s book. I was asked and I said yes. I played that little animal
in the play, and I loved it. It was the first time I acted.
I felt pretty good and of course I was nervous and everything, but I had
this feeling that I could trust myself and even though I felt a bit
stressed, I could still enjoy it somehow. Also, I wasn’t afraid of it. I
could just play it.
We had this big family, and we would have family reunions, dinners and
luncheons and I would always perform something with my cousins. It was
dramatic pieces or dances, and I would sing as well. I am sure that my
parents didn’t enjoy it that much, but I always liked performing,” she
says.
All that creative potential however was almost derailed.
Corinna explains, “Although, I loved it as a child, when I was a
teenager, as many teenagers do, I had an experience in class when I
couldn’t remember the lines and I became super scared. I just stopped
anything that had to do with performing completely. When I was at
university I did this internship for this project in Spain. Just to go a
bit further back I studied international culture and business studies.
It had nothing to do with acting and I completely forgot about that side
of me. I was always creative. I went into drawing and writing, and I
wrote some poetry, but I didn’t go into acting.”
The one thing you quickly learn about Corinna Seiter is she is a
determined lady. For instance, the theatrical release of the film Los
Europeos (The Europeans) in 2020, did not receive the attention that it
deserved, because of the COVID pandemic.
“My character is called Nin. She is German and the (film) is (set) in
the late fifties. She comes to Ibiza, a beautiful island in Spain. She
leaves her husband at home, and she explores and lets loose.
The movie is about two Spanish men, Miguel (Raúl Arévalo) and Antonio
(Juan Diego Botto) who go to Ibiza. One of the men is good with women
and the other one is a bit more shy. They go to Ibiza to have fun, to
enjoy their lives and to enjoy their summer. They come together with all
of these different people from Europe. There are French, Germans, people
from England and Sweden, because at that time a lot of Europeans went to
Spain for holidays. Spain in that moment (under the dictatorship of
Franco) was very, very strict, when it came to sexuality and when it
came to being open. It was very difficult to have fun. It was very prude
in a way.
The main character (Miguel) meets a French woman, they fall in love,
they have a romance, and the movie is about how Spain at that time
wanted to be European.
It is based on a novel by a Spanish writer Rafael Azcona.
I love it. I love period pieces. It has something like fantasy as well,
but it is very different, because it is a story. You are in this other
world that doesn’t exist anymore. It is very different, because you have
a set of rules that you have to follow, so it makes sense. The clothes,
the cars and the hair, have to be from that era. I remember the
hairdresser was suffering a little bit with my hair, because it is very
curly. He said the people in that era didn’t wear their hair curly. They
had to either straighten it or it had to be a different kind of curly.
It was very strict in that time. I think it really is fun to go back in
time and put on different clothes and to imagine what it would have been
like to have lived during that period.
We still feel a lot of that history still in us, from our grandparents.
It is still surrounding us. Fashion always keeps coming back, but just
to imagine what it would have been like to have lived during that time.
The rules that we wouldn’t be aware of now, how you would have behaved
and how restricted things were. I think that is very interesting,” she
says.
During Season two of Otros Mundos (Other Worlds) Corinna Seiter
appeared in episode six of Roswell: Caso Clave which aired in March of 2020. As you might suspect from the title the
episode dealt with the mystery surrounding Roswell in the United States.
Corinna Seiter played Lorraine Haut, the wife of Walter G. Haut and his
connection real or not to the supposed crash of a U.F.O. in New Mexico.
Although Corinna Seiter’s appearances on screen are brief, you are left
with being how impressed you are with her strong performance. She
describes the episode as Docufiction.
“I think I mentioned before some characters have a shorter time on
screen and that was one of those characters. I don’t have that many
scenes in the project. Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas is an amazing director. His way of working was (great) and
he has a proper rehearsal with us. He told me exactly what he wanted
from that character, how he envisioned the character and we spoke about
how he wanted to do it. He was very open to my proposal as well. There
was this amazing chemistry with the whole team.
It was very important to show the human side of Walter Holt, what he
thought would be the right thing to do. It is a gray area and doesn’t
say exactly what happened. These contradictions and inner struggles that
he is going through. On the other side he has his wife who is trying to
support him and who is pregnant.
I am going to be super honest, I just had one shooting. I was there for
one day and it was still one of the best experiences I had shooting for
film and television. I felt really taken care of and I felt it was the
right environment to work with all of these professionals. It was
lovely,” she recalls.
The 2022
television series Fugitivos (Fugitives) starred Corinna Seiter as
Cuidadora. The Casting director was Ana Sanchez de la Morena the same
casting director for Roswell: Caso Clave.
“The casting director asked me to do this project. It was about
different fugitives around Spain, and it was following their footsteps.
In this case it was about a richer German woman whose father was
poisoned. I don’t know if she did it or she didn’t do it. The police
were looking for her, because they thought she might have poisoned him.
I played the nurse for her father. It was a thriller. In the end I think
she was found by the police in Spain. It is based on a real story. It is
fun to play the bad guys and those kinds of characters,” she says.
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Continuing
she says, “I wanted what is important for me to say and then I thought
how can I show that and say that, without making it too autobiographic?
I wanted to leave it in general, so anybody can empathize with that
character. 