Simone Thomalla

About Simone Thomalla

Simone Thomalla (born 11 April 1965 in Leipzig) is a German actress, singer and audio book narrator. She had her breakthrough as an apprentice Monika Helmholtz in the multi-part series Durchreise – Die Geschichte einer Firma. She became known to a wide audience as the Leipzig Tatort inspector Eva Saalfeld. She gained further fame as village helper Katja Baumann in the ZDF television series Frühling.

Life
Simone Thomalla is the daughter of film architect Alfred Thomalla and model Erika Thomalla.

In 1988 she met the theater actor André Vetters, to whom she was married from 1991 to 1995. In 1989, their daughter Sophia Thomalla was born from this relationship. From 1995 to 1999 she was in a relationship with the actor Sven Martinek and from 2000 to the beginning of 2009 she lived in Gelsenkirchen with the football manager Rudi Assauer. With him she shot commercials for the Veltins brewery; In 2006, they received the Golden Camera in the category Best Commercial with Celebrities. They also appeared regularly together in the game show Typical Woman – Typical Man on RTL.

From 2009 to 2021, Thomalla was in a relationship with national handball player Silvio Heinevetter, and from 2022 to March 2023 with DJ Nicolino Hermano.

For the benefit of UNICEF, she is involved in the benefit project Prominence for Charity. In 2010, she was in front of the camera for the February issue of Playboy. In Playboy from October 2015 with the title Germany's 25 most beautiful stars, she was on the cover together with her daughter.

Career
Simone Thomalla, who grew up in Potsdam, originally wanted to become a pianist, but then studied at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin, where she took part in the special music class.

She made her film debut in 1982 as Franziska Lammertin alongside Reimar Johannes Baur and Irma Münch in the GDR television film Abgefunden. In 1986 she sang in the GDR pop band Jessica as a background singer.

Thomalla made her stage debut in 1987 at the Metropol Theater Berlin in the rock musical Rosa Laub. In the two years that followed, she appeared on stage at the Theater Junge Generation in Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe and Frank Wedekind's Frühlings Erwachen, among others.

In the DEFA film satire Zwei schräge Vögel (1989) she played the role of Petra Anschütz. In the 1990s, she had regular roles in several television series. In 1991, she played one of the leading roles in the DFF series Agentur Herz as the young actress Karin, directed by Ulrich Thein. From 1993 to 1997 she starred alongside Wolfgang Fierek in the Sat.1 series Ein Bayer auf Rügen as series daughter Hanna Gernrich; in the ZDF series Unser Lehrer Doktor Specht she played the role of Regine Holle from 1993 to 1995. Thomalla had her breakthrough in 1993 as apprentice Monika Helmholtz in the six-part ZDF miniseries Durchreise – Die Geschichte einer Firmen. In 1996, she got her own television series with Mona M. – With the Weapons of a Woman; in it, she embodied the title character of the public prosecutor Mona Morena. From 1997 to 1999, she portrayed a pediatrician in the television series Doctors. She also appeared in the Tatort episodes Berliner Weiße (1998) and Bienzle und die blinde Wut (1999).

In the 2000s, Thomalla increasingly starred in television films. She was only sporadically seen in episode roles in television series, including Der letzte Zeuge, Siska, Der Alte, Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei and Der Bulle von Tölz. She starred alongside Doreen Jacobi and Thure Riefenstein in the erotic drama Anna H. – Geliebte, Ehefrau und Hure, alongside Sascha Hehn in Fremde Frauen küsst man nicht, in Am Anfang war die Eifersucht with Stephan Schwartz, alongside Dieter Pfaff and Rita Russek in Ein Vater zum Verlieben (2001) and alongside Friedrich von Thun in Our Papa, the Genius (2002).

Thomalla also had film roles in the multi-award-winning youth drama Bis aufs Blut – Brüder auf Beprobation (2010), where she played the mother of a drug-addicted teenager from Würzburg who has to go to prison after a drug deal. In the Sat.1 television comedy Bei manchen Männer hilft nur Voodoo (2010), she played the character of Doris Günther, who is suppressed by her husband with psychotropic drugs. In the ZDF television film Familie Fröhlich – Schlimmer geht immer (2010), she was seen alongside Jürgen Tarrach as the wife of an unemployed man who tries to keep the family afloat with evening sales events. Directed by Thomas Nennstiel, she took on the title role of cleaning lady Alexandra Fuchs in the ARD television film Die Erfinderbraut (2013), who wants to present her invention, a shelf life meter for food, to the businessman Gregor Sand, embodied by Ulrich Noethen. In the same year, she starred alongside Sven Martinek in After All the Years a Writer.

In May 2008, Thomalla made her debut as a Tatort investigator in the 700th official Tatort episode Todesstrafe and formed the Leipzig investigator duo Saalfeld and Keppler for MDR's Tatort in 21 episodes with Martin Wuttke until 2015.

Since June 2011, she has been seen in the ZDF television series Frühling in the leading role of village helper Katja Baumann.

Together with Andrea Berg and Birgit Schrowange, Thomalla recorded a cover version of Herbert Grönemeyer's Männer, which was published in January 2013 on Bergs Abenteuer – 20 Jahre. From February to April 2025, she was a participant in the 18th season of the RTL dance show Let's Dance together with Evgeny Vinokurov, where she finished eighth out of 14 participants.