Clara Pontoppidan

Biography

Born under the gaslight of Copenhagen on 23 April 1883, Clara Pontoppidan grew into the kind of performer who could hush a theatre simply by stepping onstage. Three generations of filmgoers remember her very differently: as the tormented wife in En kvinde er overflødig (1957), the luminous storyteller of Once Upon a Time (1922), and, more than forty years earlier, the defiant heroine of The Steel King's Last Wish (1913). Between these screen lives she shared two marriages—first to actor Carlo Wieth, later to engineer Povl Pontoppidan—yet always returned home to the city that had watched her take her first breath. She died there, quietly, on 22 January 1975, leaving behind a century’s worth of performances still flickering in Danish memory.