Film work
Lothar made her film debut in Tankred Dorst's Eisenhans (Strange Fruits, 1983), which earned her the Federal Film Prize for best young actress.
She worked with Austrian director Michael Haneke in four films, typically playing women in states of extreme physical or emotional distress.
In Funny Games (1997) she and Mühe played a bourgeois married couple who are terrorised, tortured and eventually murdered by two young intruders in their palatial country house. Haneke originally offered the role to Isabelle Huppert who turned it down, explaining later "[t]here was very little space for fiction, it was more like a sacrifice for the actors than anything else." In a 2019 interview for the Criterion Collection release of Funny Games, Haneke explained that Lothar would make herself cry before shooting a scene. Haneke also required Lothar to film multiple takes of difficult scenes (including one where she is forced to pray for her family's life), until she reached the state of physical and mental exhaustion he wanted for the character. The film's controversial themes and success on the film festival circuit introduced Lothar to a wider international audience.
In the same year, Lother and Mühe appeared in Haneke's adaptation of Franz Kafka's 1926 novel The Castle. First shown on television in Austria, the film was released theatrically in Germany, the Czech Republic, Japan, Canada and the United States.
Lothar appeared in Haneke's psychological drama The Piano Teacher (2001) as the ambitious mother of a young pianist who is bullied by her jealous teacher (played by Isabelle Huppert). The film won multiple prizes at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, with Lothar receiving critical praise for her work.
Lothar's final film with Haneke was the Palme d'Or-winning period drama The White Ribbon (2009), an examination of repression and violence in a German village just before the outbreak of World War I. Lothar's role as a midwife in an abusive relationship with the village doctor again showcased her affinity for playing anguished, masochistic women.
In 2006, Lothar and Mühe co-starred in Nicole Mosleh's debut feature Nemesis, another portrayal of an estranged married couple in crisis. Mühe was diagnosed with cancer while the film was in post-production and died before its completion. After Mühe's death, Lothar brought a legal claim against the filmmakers, preventing its release for three years. Nemesis eventually premiered at the Hof International Film Festival in 2010.
Lothar appeared in English-language roles in Stephen Daldry's The Reader (2008) and Joe Wright's Anna Karenina (2012). At the time of her death, she had been shooting the drama Inner Amok with Austrian director Peter Brunner.
