Maia Morgenstern – the perfume of the successful of a great Romanian actress

In her interviews, she describes how inadequate she has always felt in her chosen profession, but in the sense that she has always had to struggle not to rest on her laurels. She also describes how she overcame her sickly nature from when she was a child because she learned how important it was for an actor to be healthy. Maia Morgenstern is a fascinating personage, who openly admits to loving the spotlight and whose candor is disarming.

Maia Morgenstern was born on the 1st of May, 1962, to a Jewish family, in Bucharest. She unabashedly relates how she began her career with a failure – she failed her first admission exam to the Faculty of Theater – and how she went to her second admission in an ambulance, burning up with a 40 ° C temperature. But luckily, she got in the second time.

She says that it was actually her father who realized that she wanted to become an actress first. And he discovered his daughter’s desire from the way she enjoyed and lived through theater. The actress admits to having loved theater from a very early age but she also confesses that she had a hard time admitting to herself that she wanted to act. Her reason was her fear of a failure.

Thirteen years into a remarkable career, she became internationally famous for her role of Jesus’ Mother in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Allegedly, one of the reasons why Mel Gibson chose her for this part was that her name, Morgenstern, means “Morning Star”, which is another name given to the Virgin Mary. She said that she found the role very powerful and tried to play the character as the universal mother suffering for her child.

But besides this role, she has starred in many Romanian films and won many awards. The actress nostalgically remembers her first role as Puck in A midsummer night’s dream by Shakespeare. Her first successes, however, came in the form of Best Actress Awards for Those who pay with their lives (1991), Balanţa (1992), The Passion of the Christ (2004) and for theater performances. 

Sources:

http://www.vedeteblog.com/2012/07/maia-morgenstern-biografia-divort-de.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia_Morgenstern

adevarul.ro/life-style/stil-de-viata/maia-morgenstern-actrita-cariera-teatru-debutat-esec-1_50b9ff347c42d5a663aec374/index.html

http://www.vivid.ro/vivid71/pages71/interview71.htm