Aud Egede-Nissen

Aud Egede-Nissen (30 May 1893 – 15 November 1974) was a Norwegian actress, director and producer. She appeared in many early 20th-century German silent films. Early life Born in Bergen, Norway in 1893, Egede-Nissen was a daughter of Norwegian postmaster and politician Adam Hjalmar Egede-Nissen (1868–1953) and his wife Georga "Goggi" Wilhelma Ellertsen (1871–1959); she had ten siblings. Four younger sisters and two younger brothers all became actors as well: Gerd Grieg (1895–1988), Ada Kramm (1899–1981), Oscar Egede-Nissen (1903–1976), Stig Egede-Nissen (1907–1988), Lill Egede-Nissen (1909–1962) and Gøril Havrevold (1914–1992). German film career Aud made her acting debut on the Norwegian stage in 1911, appearing next in Norwegian director Bjørn Bjørnson's 1913 film Scenens børn. In 1913 she moved to Denmark and started working for Dania Biofilm Kompagni in Copenhagen. In 1914, Bjørn Bjørnson invited her to Berlin, where there were opportunities in the rapidly expanding film industry. In 1916, she appeared in Otto Rippert's six-part sci-fi serial Homunculus. Also that year, she starred as the character "Christine Daaé" in a German adaptation, directed by Ernst Matray, of Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera opposite Swedish actor Nils Olaf Chrisander. From 1917 Aud Egede-Nissen was not contented with being an actor in other companies' films in Berlin. In partnership with her husband Georg Alexander, she started the Egede-Nissen Film Co. (Egede-Nissen Filmbyrå) where she was the artistic and financial manager. Alexander directed most of their films, while Aud Egede-Nissen and her sisters Ada Kramm and Gerd Grieg usually played the female lead roles. Production notes suggest that these were mainly melodramas in serial form or detective films. In the two years between 1917 and 1919 her film company produced at least 29 films. Harder times and centralization in the German film industry after World War I ultimately contributed to the closing of Egede-Nissen's film company at the beginning of the 1920s. In 1920, she starred in two films directed by Ernst Lubitsch.