Karoline Herfurth

Lovely young German actress Karoline Herfurth is just a wisp of a thing, standing barely over five feet tall, but her acting skills have made her a serious player in both her native land and abroad. Born in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Herfurth was discovered in 1995 while practicing with her theater dance group. She was quickly enrolled in Berlin's prestigious Ernst Buch drama school, and rapidly began getting plum roles in a number of movies. Her first big part was in the 2001 teen sex comedy "Mädchen, Mädchen," released in America as "Girls On Top." She also starred in the film's 2004 sequel, as well as several other German films about teenage girls struggling with modern life. Her first international breakthrough came in Tom Tykwer's 2006 film "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer," in which she played the first victim of scent-obsessed serial killer Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Her photograph was heavily used to promote the movie. Her next big exposure came with 2008's "The Reader," which was a major player at that year's Oscars. Herfurth is getting ready to move into the spotlight with larger roles, and the 2010 vampire thriller "We Are The Night" let her carry the picture with her performance as Lena, a young street thief who gets inducted into the dark world of the walking dead.