Birgit Ludemann’s love for performing began when she was 12 years old when she attended her first drama class with a friend. She remembers a feeling of euphoria when she first got up on the stage and from that moment on, she was in love with performing. She sees it as something akin to addiction, only in a very positive way. Once you’ve been there, up on the stage, you need to be there again and again, she says. Now, of course, even though Birgit considers herself an actress and has achieved so much in such a short time, she is involved in different types of performance activities other than stage. She is comfortable in front of the camera, in front of a microphone and in front of a still camera as a model.
Birgit is always pursuing perfection in all the creative and artistic possibilities of life. She won a great deal of acting awards in South Africa (her home country) and studied Theatre Performance at the University of Stellenbosch, where she got her degree in Acting and Psychology. She also went on to get a post-graduate degree there (with Honors) in TV/Film Producing. During that time she did just about everything to get her first short film off the ground. She developed the script in pre-production, oversaw the production as the producer and finally, she edited the film.
She also was a radio host and lent her talented voice to some radio commercials. Traveling to the United States, she studied Acting for TV and Film at the prestigious New York Film Academy where she made a lot of friends and future film connections.
Birgit has played lead roles in quite a few films, such as Maquisard, in which she played a South African character named Naomi Basson, a combat medic in a parachute brigade. That leading role was one of Birgit’s favorites and she got to speak her native Afrikaans (she also speaks German and English fluently). Another movie which challenged Birgit in a lead role was Cans and Candles, in which she portrayed a starving lesbian actress in Hollywood. It was challenging, she says, because Birgit is definitely a heterosexual woman. This film allowed her to speak her other two languages because the script was half German and half English.
Other films Birgit has had leading part in should be mentioned here too: Fives, an award-winning short film directed by the highly accomplished filmmaker Luciana Capela. Stay, in which Birgit plays the wife’s best friend who supports her during labor while her husband is dying. Mac Daddy’s Vegas Adventure is a feature film that also stars C. Thomas Howell and will be released soon. Demystifying Love will be directed by Luciana Capela and Birgit will play the main antagonist in the movie.
Western Credence, the full-length motion picture that is produced and co-written by Byron James, will cast Birgit in the role of Sophia Burrows, the lead love interest in the movie. The script has already won a distinguished honor even before it went into pre-production. It was a top finalist in the Hollywood Hills Screenplay Competition in 2015. Byron James and the talented Cloud Mykals, who are partners in Cerberus Entertainment, have received countless kudos for their recently released film Abyss of Being.
Birgit is indeed very busy these days. She is working with some of the best creative minds in Hollywood, which always is a good thing for performers. It keeps them on their toes and brings the best out of them.
