Marthe Keller

Marthe Keller is a Swiss actress born on January 28, 1945, in Basel, Switzerland. She trained in ballet during childhood before a skiing accident at age 16 ended that pursuit and redirected her toward acting. She subsequently built her early stage career in Berlin, working at both the Schiller Theater and the Berliner Ensemble.

Keller's screen career began with an uncredited appearance in the 1966 film Funeral in Berlin, followed by the German production Wilder Reiter GmbH in 1967. Through the early 1970s she appeared in several French films, among them Un Cave (1971), La Raison du Plus Fou (1973), and Toute Une Vie/And Now My Love (1974). Her profile in American cinema rose considerably with Marathon Man (1976), in which she played Dustin Hoffman's girlfriend — a performance that earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination. The following year she appeared in Black Sunday (1977) as a Palestinian terrorist who orchestrates an attack on the Super Bowl. Also in 1977, she starred opposite Al Pacino in the romantic drama Bobby Deerfield, adapted from Erich Maria Remarque's novel Heaven Has No Favorites; the two subsequently entered a personal relationship. In 1978 she appeared alongside William Holden in Billy Wilder's Fedora. After that point, Keller shifted her focus predominantly to European productions, including Dark Eyes (1987) with Marcello Mastroianni. In April 2016 she was named president of the jury for the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.

Keller made her Broadway debut in 2001 in an all-star adaptation of Abby Mann's Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by John Tillinger. She played Mrs. Bertholt, the role originated on screen by Marlene Dietrich in Stanley Kramer's 1961 film version. The performance earned Keller both a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play.

Alongside her film and stage work, Keller has pursued an extensive career in classical music as a speaker and opera director. She has performed the speaking role in Arthur Honegger's oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher on multiple occasions under conductors including Seiji Ozawa and Kurt Masur, and recorded the role for Deutsche Grammophon with Ozawa. She has also performed the spoken part in Igor Stravinsky's Perséphone and given recitals of classical melodramas for speaker and piano. Swiss composer Michael Jarrell wrote the melodrama Cassandre, based on Christa Wolf's novel, specifically for Keller, who performed its world premiere in 1994.

As an opera director, Keller first staged Dialogues des Carmélites for the Opéra national du Rhin in 1999, a production that also received a semi-staged performance in London that same year. She has directed Lucia di Lammermoor for both Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera, and made her Metropolitan Opera directorial debut with a production of Don Giovanni in 2004.

Keller has one son, Alexandre, born in 1972, from her relationship with French director Philippe de Broca. She also had relationships with director Claude Lelouch and actor Al Pacino.