Born in
Templin, Winkler trained to be a medical technologist in Stuttgart. Interested in theater, she went to Munich, where she took acting classes with
Ernst Fritz Fürbringer. In 1967, she had her first role at the theater in
Kassel. In 1969, she played the lead role in
Peter Fleischmann's film
Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern. After seeing this film,
Peter Stein offered her a position at the
Berliner Schaubühne. Winkler performed in Berlin from 1971 to 1978. Her next film,
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, directed by
Volker Schlöndorff and
Margarethe von Trotta, made her a star in 1975. For the role of Katharina Blum, she received the
Filmband in Gold. In 1979, she won international fame as the mother of Oskar Matzerath in Schlöndorff's Oscar-winning film
The Tin Drum, an adaption of the famous
book of the same name by
Günter Grass. More recently, Winkler appeared in
Dark (2017), the first German-language Netflix original series, and as Miss Tanner in
Luca Guadagnino's
Suspiria (2018). Winkler lives with sculptor Wiegand Wittig and has four children. Her daughter Nele, who has Down's syndrome, is also an actress; she had a role in
Dora or The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents and is a member of the ensemble at RambaZamba theatre in Berlin. == Filmography ==