Dear Désirée Nick
I must be completely honest and admit that your talent is beyond description. The only way out is to quote, “a character actress has no one role, she has mastered them all. One or two of these actresses has had the reputation of a greater or lesser degree of ugliness. Yet whenever she needed to be, she could be amazingly beautiful, in a way that was brilliant, even lovely.” That was Thomas Mann. He didn't refer to you directly, because he unfortunately didn't live long enough to meet you.

Lothar Kusche - 2002 in Ossietzky (Fortnightly magazine for Politics, Culture and Economics)

Désirée Nick, actress, entertainer, stand-up comedian, author, full-blooded artiste, whose versatile qualities only really come to light on a second glance, thanks to the attentions of the tabloid press, which is more interested in a close-up of her dazzling personality.

Born on 30th September in West Berlin, Désirée Nick grew up in the unique mixture of bourgeois and creative forces in the divided city. As a child she already harboured ambitions both artistic and sporting and she trained as a classical ballet dancer at the Berlin Dance Academy, culminating in an engagement at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin a a member of the corps de ballet(1975-1982). Her career at the Deutsche Oper made her top choice as a first class showgirl at the Lido de Paris. Her training and experience of the working world of entertainment have given her the professionality and discipline which still characterise her attitude to work today, whatever project she is engaged on. To quote Désirée Nick, “there are no ex-dancers. Once a professional dancer, always a professional dancer.”

It's also a true legend that Nick completed three years of studies at the Theological-Pedagogical Academy Berlin to qualify as a Roman Catholic Religious Studies teacher for secondary schools, a profession which she also practised for some years. Her height of 180m had made her too tall to continue as a professional dancer and she was forced to end her career, which left her deeply depressed. A priest helped her to turn her life around and she became a teacher of Catholic religious studies. After three years she abandoned this career, this time due to an attitude which the Church found too progressive.

She was ahead of her time and at the end of the 1980s established teaching methods which are standard today.

She went to London, where she expanded her acting talents and completed her training at the Actor's Institute. Apart from that in London she met the father of her son, Prince Heinrich von Hannover.

Désirée Nick has been gracing German stages for 15 years in classical and serious roles as well as in comedy. The range stretches from Schnitzler's “The Round Dance”, Kleist's “The Broken Jug”, and Büchner's “Danton's Death” on the one hand to Goetz's “Hocus-Pocus”, “Lend me a Tenor” and “Destination” by Thomas Bernhard and various comedies at the Komödie and the Theatre on the Kurfürstendamm. It is notable that Nick as a young actress played elderly women and old hags, in stark contrast to her real age.

Nick has shone in productions by talented young directors such as Bernd Mottl (“Nothing better” by Oliver Bukowski, Renaissance Theatre), Adriana Altaras (“The Women” by Clare Boothe Luce, Maxim Gorki Theatre) and René Pollesch at the Volksbühne. She has also graced films by extraordinary film directors such as, among others, Rosa von Praunheim (“Neurosia”, 1995), Max Färberböck (“Aimée and Jaguar”, 1998) and J. Kuhn (“Fisimatenten” 1999).

Nick's outstanding reviews as an actress and the award of the Film Prize at the Locarno Film Festival in 1997 nevertheless receive less attention than her spectacular solo shows in Berlin, which Nick has performing since 1993 and in which she's not known for mincing words!

In these, Nick presents herself as a work of art and leaves both critics and audience stunned at her revolutionary attitude to showbiz. Nothing is sacred - our diva gives us entertainment with a double serving of culture - violently funny and yet with a literary content. Dressed flawlessly in glamorous outfits which would be at home in a Las Vegas show, Nick transforms herself into what she sarcastically terms “the Madonna of the geriatrics”. A witty raconteur and devastating analyst of the showbusiness world, she doesn't stop at showing up publicity-addicted would-be stars - Nick even unmasks herself and it is this in the end which makes her stage presence so authentic. This stage presence classes her as one of the few truly successful women in her field.

The price of her unique creation “La Nick” - her versatile artistry is reduced to that of a mere battleaxe. She becomes the darling of the tabloid press and succumbs to the seduction of the mass media world. With malignant seriousness, iron discipline and fabulous humour, Nick wins the crown as the jungle queen in the RTL ratings hit show “I'm a celebrity - get me out of here!” and risks losing the respect of the serious cultural scene, which can't make head nor tail of Nick's malicious appearance in the much-hated “reality TV”. The Frankfurter Allgemeine called her “A world-class jungle queen”. Desirée Nick is a loud-mouthed provocateur and as such is both a popular and much-feared guest on national talkshows. Ofcourse with a huge gay following......the Bette Davies of Germany we could call her!

In recent years Nick has embraced the written as well as the spoken word and has been a huge success in print. All of her books were top of the bestseller lists for weeks at a time and delight readers with their mix of amusing and intelligent content. Whether “Is there life after forty?”, or “What our mothers never told us”, her drily-written, thoughtful and hilariously funny observations on the day-to-day lives of German women have been enormous successes and her public readings have filled theatres. “Eva go home!”, her third book, is a clever and sharp-witted response to the outmoded ideas on woman of a certain TV presenter with a rotten perm. Nick's writing is, as ever, based on the elementary principle which the bolshie artiste applies to friend and foe alike - “keeping quiet would be as bad as agreeing with you!”