Brigitte Helm

Helm was discovered by Fritz Lang as a teenager and cast in her first major film role at just seventeen, an almost unheard-of level of responsibility for a young actress with essentially no prior professional experience.

She played the impossible dual role of Maria and her robotic double at just 18 — a physical performance so precise that the Maschinenmensch's jerking, uncanny movements are still studied by animators. The robot costume itself was so rigid and physically punishing that she suffered real bruising and injury during filming.

The role made her one of the most recognizable faces of German silent cinema, though she largely retired from acting only a decade later, well before the medium fully transitioned to sound.