Sybille Schmitz (born December 2, 1909 - April 13, 1955) was a German actress. Sybille attended an acting school in Cologne and got her first engagement at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater Berlin in 1927.
Only one year later she made her film debut with Freie Fahrt (1928), which attracted her first attention from the critics. To her other early movies belong Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1929), Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey (1932) and eventually antwortet_nicht" target="_blank">F.P. 1 antwortet nicht (1932), where she played her first leading role. She became established as a great actress of the German cinema with her next movies and was fascinating as a mysterious woman in movies like Der Herr der Welt (1934), Abschiedswalzer (1934), Ein idealer Gatte (1935) and Fährmann Maria (35) - a very individual movie which came alive from her performance.
She took part in the movies Die Umwege des schönen Karl (1937), Tanz auf dem Vulkan (1938), Die Frau ohne Vergangenheit (1939), Trenck, der Pandur (1940) and _Titanic (1943).
After the war it became difficult for the actress to locate demanding roles that allowed her to display her wide-ranging talent. She appeared in the movies Zwischen gestern und morgen (1947), Sensation im Savoy (1950) and Illusion in Moll (1952), but her way back to anonymity was paved with drugs. There followed depression and several suicide attempts, finally the committal to a psychiatric clinic. She had a complete breakdown and committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. One year later an action was brought against her doctor for improper medical treatment.
The last years of Sybille Schmitz were used as the basis for Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1982 movie Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss.
Sybille Schmitz was married to the screenwriter Harald G. Peterson. The marriage broke up when Sybille Schmitz had a love affair with the theatre chief Beate von Molo.
Her tragic life after the end of World War II - struggling to get roles, drug addiction, suicide - inspired Rainer Werner Fassbinder to his acclaimed film Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Die (1982).
