Alexandra Maria Lara

Born in Bucharest, Lara is the only child of actor Valentin Plătăreanu and his wife, Doina. Her father was a successful actor and director in Romania, directing many plays such as Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare and Hernani by Victor Hugo.

In 1983, her family emigrated to West Germany from their home in Bucharest, Romania. Although the family had originally planned to emigrate to Canada, they settled in Freiburg im Breisgau, before eventually moving to West Berlin. She became fluent in German.

By the age of sixteen, Lara was playing lead roles in various television dramas; since then she has appeared in films, including as Traudl Junge, Adolf Hitler's secretary, in the Academy Award-nominated 2004 film Downfall; following this Francis Ford Coppola wrote her a letter and gave her a leading role in Youth Without Youth (2007).

In 2007, Lara appeared as Belgian journalist Annik Honoré in the biopic Control. In 2008 she served as a member of the Cannes Film Festival jury. She has also appeared in several French productions, including Napoléon and L'Affaire Farewell. She appeared in The Reader and Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, which were both nominated for the 81st Academy Awards for best picture and best foreign language film respectively.

In 2018, Lara starred with her husband, Sam Riley, in Happy New Year, Colin Burstead by Ben Wheatley, playing his German girlfriend.

Alongside Florian Gallenberger, Lara served as president of the Deutsche Filmakademie from 2022 to 2025.

In August 2009, Lara married English actor Sam Riley, with whom she had acted in the films Control and Suite Française. In January 2014, she gave birth to their first child, a boy. They played a couple on screen in Ben Wheatley's drama Happy New Year, Colin Burstead.