
A prominent German film actress born on 30 September 1887 at Madiven, Java, the daughter of a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch authorities. Sent at the age of ten to Baden-Baden to study, she later entered the cinema thanks to her marriage in 1917 to the actor Fritz Dagover who was 25 years her senior. They divorced in 1919 but not before he had introduced her to director Robert Wiene and other notables of German cinema. She made her screen debut in Fritz Lang's Harakiri (1919). Immediately after she appeared in Wiene's classic expressionist film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)). Apart from three trips -- one to Sweden in 1927, another to France in 1928-9 and one to Hollywood in 1931 -- most of Lil Dagover's career and fate was linked to that of the German cinema, where her role was usually that of the frail, menaced heroine. She continued to star in a great number of films during the Nazi era. Among her best performances were her roles in Congress Dances (1931), in Gerhard Lamprecht's The Higher Command (1935) and in Veit Harlan's The Kreutzer Sonata (1937). She also acted in the Deutsches Theatre Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, at forces shows and at war theaters. At one time, she was reported to have been a close friend of Adolf Hitler. In 1944, she received the War Merits Cross. Dagover continued her career in post-war Germany, playing many supporting parts until the late 1970s.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
1920 · as Jane

Monte Cristo
1929 · as Mercédès / Comtesse de Morcerf

Destiny
1921 · as Young Woman / Zobeide / Mona Fiametta / Tiao Tsien

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
1922 · as (uncredited)

Fridericus
1937 · as Marquise de Pompadour

The Standard
1977 · as Erzherzogin

Harakiri
1919 · as O-Take-San

Vienna 1910
1943 · as Maria Anschütz

The Bird Seller
1935 · as Die Kurfürstin

The Strange Countess
1961 · as Gräfin / Lady Leonora Moron

Va Banque
1930 · as Harriet Williams

Boycott
1930 · as Frau von Generaldirektor Haller

The White Devil
1930 · as Nelidowa

Trees die upright
1958 · as Großmutter

Bettler GmbH
1919

Ich heirate meine Frau
1934 · as Lisa Behmer

Die Teufelsbraut
1977

End of the Game
1978 · as Gastmann's Mother