Meet Matt Damon's Dead Ex
Poor Franka Potente. In 2002's The Bourne Identity, the 30-year-old German actress created the role of Marie, the streetwise Berliner who fell for Matt Damon's amnesiac assassin, Jason Bourne. This summer's hit sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, treated moviegoers to a nasty surprise: Early on in the movie, Marie gets whacked! Now, that ain't right.
Potente, who first popped up on America's radar in 1999's Run Lola Run, wasn't thrilled with Marie's exit either. She thought Bourne's brave girlfriend deserved better than to passively jump in his jeep, only to be shot in the back of her noggin by a contract killer — sheesh, talk about riding shotgun! — and end up at the bottom of a river.
"I had different ideas of the way that we — how shall I phrase this? — lose sight of her," Potente grins. "But the director [Paul Greengrass] is really good and he fought me on it. In the end, I guess the better argument won. I was cool with it. What can you do?"
Where did she differ with Greengrass, exactly? "I just wanted Marie a little more kick-ass," she admits. "I wanted her to be more actively protective of [Jason Bourne]. I think they fought really hard, in the time gap between the first and the second films, to achieve [the relationship] they have. He still has nightmares and stuff, but they have their own little place and they're somewhat happy. I think women can get protective and very strong when someone we love is in danger."
Oh, well. On the bright side, Potente has a bright post-Bourne film career ahead of her. She'll co-star in the highly anticipated Che with Antonio Banderas. And this summer, she's shooting the lead role in the period thriller Therese Raquin with Shakespeare in Love's Joseph Fiennes as her wicked love interest. Not bad. "It's based on an Émile Zola novel, which was exciting to read," she enthuses. "It's really cool! It's a woman in the 1860s, so I'm in corsets and hoop skirts for the first time. [The story's] about passionate lust versus love."
