Gruschenka Stevens

Gruschenka Stevens (born Grace Simon, July 16, 1974 in Cologne, Germany) is a German actress and singer.

Gruschenka Stevens.

At the age of six, she played a role in the film "An afternoon in Cologne" and had, shortly after a guest appearance on the popular children's show "The TV-Show with the Mouse". At age 11, she acted in a play at the Schauspielhaus in Cologne and went with 17 years to New York where she took acting classes at the studios of Herbert Berghoff & Uta Hagen. She then attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in NYC, London, and Los Angeles where she promptly received her first role in a Canadian-German soap opera.

In the movies Nobody loves me by Doris Dörrie and Full normaaal 1994 Gruschenka received first small roles in German film. In 1995, she was widely noticed as she enacted, under the direction of Ralf Huettner, a hospital switchboard operator in The cold finger.

In 1999, she embodied a singer in Sherry Horman's Widows and an overwhelmed, struggling mother in Get away from here directed by Franziska Buch, which for this film was awarded the Max Ophüls Prize. In 2001, once again directed by Huettner she acted in the film adaptation of the bestseller book by Ildiko von Kürthy Moonlight Tariff on the side of Jasmin Tabatabai. In the popular movie Moonlight Tariff she played a very urban and very confused woman, in her late twenties, who after many romantic misunderstandings, still gets to have her ‘Mr.Right‘in the end. After that she paired up with director Vivian Naefe with whom she created 2 TV movies in a row To be crazy is normal a musical-tragic-comedy on the side of Dieter Pfaff and the black humour comedy Men piece-by-piece.

With the invitation of EMI Publishing USA, Gruschenka Stevens moved to NYC, to collaborate with several songwriters in NYC and Nashville developing her singing career. In 2004, she returned to Germany to undergo full-time studies in singing and composition which she completed in 2008. Since then Gruschenka Stevens is working as a singer/songwriter under her maiden name Grace Simon. She performed on the 25th anniversary of Greenpeace, on the opening of the Design fair in the Women's Museum, Bonn and for a big German newspaper, the Cologne Stadt-Anzeiger. Currently she is working on her debut CD. Parallel to her music career, Gruschenka Stevens continues to work as an actress.