Daniela Holtz is an actress, director, author and screenwriter. After studying acting at the HfS Ernst Busch in Berlin, she worked at Schauspiel Leipzig, Deutsches Theater and Schaubühne in Berlin, where she worked with directors such as Enrico Lübbe, Thomas Ostermeier, Armin Petras and Rafael Sanchez. She has been a freelance actress, author and theater producer since 2006, including for nachtgeschwister/provisorisch at TuD Berlin/mdr. She has appeared in numerous cinema and television productions directed by Maren Ade, Edward Berger and Christian Petzold, including Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen, Sommer in Orange, Phoenix, Pelikanblut and Tatort. Internationally, she shot the British series Victoria, which was broadcast worldwide, with directors such as Jim Loach, Tom Vaughan and Geoffrey Sax.
As an author and director, she is primarily dedicated to questions of aesthetic practice and the representation of gender on stage and in front of the camera. The principle of taking up space, the undermining of patriarchal principles, through the representation of the sensual body in (theater) space forms the starting point of her artistic work. She is the chair of the Elke Twiesselmann Prize, the first prize for young female actors in Germany. She has worked as a lecturer at the ZHdK in Zurich, the HfS Ernst Busch Berlin, the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp and the Berlin University of the Arts. Since 2017 she has been a permanent professor of practical theater work at the Folkwang University of the Arts.
