Diane Kruger, born in West Germany, trained as a ballerina, moved to Paris at 17 to work as a fashion model, married French actor Guillaume Canet, acted in his directorial debut Mon Idole (2002). She was cast in the American films Wicker Park with Josh Hartnett, Troy with Brad Pitt as Achilles and Eric Bana as Hector, National Treasure with Nicolas Cage. When the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press interviewed her three times in 2004 about those films, she spoke about working in Hollywood as a foreign actress. She continued to act in European movies like Merry Christmas (Joyeux Noël, 2005) and In the Fade (2017), as well as American movies like Copying Beethoven (2006) by Agnieszka Holland, Inglourious Basterds (2009) by Quentin Tarantino, Welcome to Marwen (2018) by Robert Zemeckis. In The 355 (2022) Kruger costars with Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, in an all-female action spy movie that celebrates women and diversity.

Kruger was shooting Wicker Park in Montreal, after having been recommended by French director Luc Besson, when her French agent urged her to put herself on tape to audition for the role of Helen in Troy to be directed by Wolfgang Petersen: “I had never been to Hollywood, and I didn’t have an agent there. I had done four small films in France, where I live when my agent called saying that they were looking all over the world for a girl. I was a new up-and-coming actress, and I would have been crazy not to at least try it, so I sent that tape in, thinking I would never hear from them because that role was obviously out of my league. But they flew me to Los Angeles to meet with the big boss at Warner Bros., which was intimidating. You sit in his office that is as big as my place in Paris, with hundreds of Oscars that the studio has won, and this man tells me that they had seen 3000 women that could launch a hundred ships or 500 ships, but they were looking for the face that could launch 1,000 ships. And luckily she turned out to be me!”

The novice actress received much-needed reassurance from the director of Troy, who was German like she was: “I don’t know if Wolfgang treated me differently, but there was definitely a stronger connection there. He really took me under his wing, and when I was a little insecure or nervous out of lack of experience, he would come up to me and say something in German. I never felt closer to a director, and he really pushed me to give a better performance, not to be shy, to ask questions, and that gave me more confidence, for sure.”

She was surprised upon meeting Brad Pitt, her Troy costar: “I didn’t know what to expect from a Hollywood movie star, so I was wondering how he was going to be, and obviously I was a little star-struck. The first time I met him was in a restaurant in Malta, where all the cast had dinner together, and I was really pleasantly surprised. He was very funny, very generous, very kind towards me, the new kid on the block. It was really refreshing for me to see that, no matter how famous he is, he is who he is because he is a great actor and he takes that very seriously, so I have a lot of respect for him.”

Kruger was equally nervous about meeting Nicolas Cage, her costar in National Treasure: “I have been his biggest fan since I can remember, I’ve probably seen all of his movies, and here I am his love interest in a movie, so it’s very surreal. I was extremely nervous before I met him, but it was wonderful, really a dream come true.  He’s a complex person, and he has his demons as everybody does, but in general, I found him to be incredibly loyal to people, and very generous to me as a new actress; he included me in everything.”

The actress explained how she went from dancing to modeling to acting: “I started dancing at a really young age. My mom was always working, so she signed up my younger brother Stephan and me into dancing school to not have to take care of us. But I really fell in love with it and always thought that I would be a ballerina one day. I was with the Royal Academy, but then when I was 13, I had an accident, I injured my knee, and that ended it all. Honestly, I realized that I did not have the talent to be a prima ballerina, so I decided to give it up, but I always knew that I wanted to perform, so modeling was my ticket out to leave Germany and move to Paris. Acting was really what I was looking for, but when you’re from another country, born in the middle of Germany, it’s not something that you think about doing. Nobody in my family had any ties to show business or even encouraged me to do something artistic. So, modeling opened doors in my horizon, and I only have good things to say about it, I appreciated the financial stability I could have from a young age and traveling the world.  And that helps me in my movie parts now because I have experienced much than maybe a girl my age wouldn’t have.”

Kruger did not believe that being a pretty girl was a hindrance to being respected as an actress: “I’m not one of these women that think that beauty is a curse. I cannot change the way I look, so I’m pretty much fine with it. If I got to be Helen of Troy, if I did National Treasure or Wicker Park, it is also because of the way I look. Then hopefully people will see my talent and range as an actress. And I have the luxury of also being able to work in Europe, to do French films and German films. In my ideal world, that’s what I will continue to be doing, so I feel pretty positive about that.”