TV SPIELFILM: Your new picture is a Rosamunde-Pilcher production. Is it a good story?

Eva Habermann: "Two sisters" is a kind of Cinderella variant. I fall in love with a somewhat snobbish Lord. Then he meets my sister and gets together with her, but in the end she lets him go, because she sees that he loves me. And well, it is Kitsch, Kitsch, Kitsch, Kitsch!

So one starts to grin/smirk while filming?

No, one gets into it pretty much. I also think we got it done pretty good, so it does not appear laughable.

From "Pumuckl-TV" to Pilcher - a lot will bring up the cliche of the superclean blond. Will it irritate you?

I have not been around so long, so anything could irritate me...

No image problem?

No, thank goodness not. After the Pilcher film I filmed a comedy like "Pretty woman", somehting totally different. Right now people don't have a concrete image of Eva Habermann.

So you can keep open all the doors for you...

...and I will be able to learn a lot from the multitudes of roles. Even though I have been taking acting, speech and singing lessons since I was 14 years old, to me it is a hand on learning process. That's for me the thrilling thing of the profession, that you can never completely learn it and that you can always get better...

Next year you will film for the ARD a summer-sun-beach serires, which already has given you the stamp of the "German Baywatch Pamela".

Of course "Baywatch" comes right to mind, since the series plays at the beach. We probably will also run around in bikinis, that offers itself. Otherwise I am really not the Pamela-Anderson-type.

When going into the archives, one finds mainly yellow press articles about the "love weekend" with the friend in Canada, the "romantic vacation" with colleague Fabian Harloff...

In the beginning it's important that you work on your publicity. But I won't do that again.

Bad experiences?

Of course often quotes are made like :"Since I am in love, I think, I am more beautiful." Anyone says something like that!

But you just take it?

It does not matter to me. I rarely read it.

You did not stand excited to the newspaper stand?

Sure, in the beginning I went at once and got the magazine and thought "Oh that is really great", but somewhere I did notice that it does not help you along.

And does the canadian friend still exist?

The job is really quite hostile to relationships.

What was the impulse to say with 14: "I will become an actress"?

The impulse was a casting call that my sister showed to me. She said:"You always wanted to do something like that, why don't you go there?" I thought, if I give everything, then it will work.

That went parallel to your school and you got your Abitur with a terrific 1.3.

It does not help me anymore now...

But didn't you have the feeling: "I was so good in school, now I have to to the university"?

For heavens sake no. My teachers always said "You are so intelligent, why don't you want to learn something acceptable?" But the thought never came to me.

You had the ambition: Become an actress, become famous and a good Abitur.

I really did not want to become famous, I wanted to act. But I am very ambitious and disciplined. Even now, when I film, for example I don't go out in the evenings. I sit down, learn scripts or goto sleep early, so I am fit in the mornings. There are actors who sock it away the night before shooting....But as long as one gives good performances, it actually does not matter what one does.

Private life has not a lot of space here. Did you sacifice a lot of friends for your career?

No, my three best girl friends experienced everything with me from the beginning. All the highs and lows. When I had from 7 to 8 in the mornings before school speech exercises in the basement and such. They only could more or less watch astonished what developed.

No envy?

In the school yes. When you get excused from lessons, because you film, people don't like that at all. But that can't bother you, because envy is always there when you do something that raises you above the masses. I also skipped a school year. And in the new class they couldn't accept a younger one that also got good grades. I was always more of an outsider, more a brooder.

But in the beginning of your career don't you have to be in the public, hang around the important parties?

No, you don't. When you get along with the people on the set, you don't have to start something with them beyond that. They should not take to me because I am beautiful, but because I fit the role and what I do with it. I am too proud to offer myself somewhere.

As a lawyers daughter from the middle-class Hamburg-Eppendorf you must have grown up sheltered.

Yes, very.

Does that stand in the way when you play certain roles and think:"That is such a beaten person, I never had problems like that." or "I never had such worries."?

An intact home is no guarantee that you don't experience hate or grief, or love sickness. On the other hand, the great thing of this profession is that you are allowed to show things that you usually not show, feelings like hate or desperation. That is freeing and feels really good.

Two years ago you were quoted with the sentence "I would moderate for the test picture, I love to stand out."

Oh my God. Today I would rather say:"I like to stand apart."