Run Lola Run… to Hollywood.

Hollywood is notoriously difficult to break for most Americans and it's even rarer for a European to make it. But young German actor Franke Potente looks set to begin living the American Dream.

Potente stars alongside Hollywood golden boy Matt Damon in "The Bourne Identity," which launched in Germany this week.

In the new film - a thriller, loosly based on the novel by Robert Ludlum - Potente plays Marie Kreutz. Kreutz is paid $10,000 by amnesia victim Jason Bourne (played by Matt Damon) to drive him from Zurich to Paris to find out who he really is.

It would be hardly be giving the game away to reveal that love blossoms between Potente's and Damon's characters along the way.

Potente, 28, shot to fame in 1998 playing the lead role of Lola in the cult German film "Lola Rennt" ("Run Lola Run").

It was not her first role, however. The actress - who is famed for her punky look, humourous screaming and relentless jogging antics in "Lola Rennt" - got her first big break in "Nach fünf im Urwald" ("After Five in the Jungle") in 1995. It this role - playing the the 17-year-old Anna - which won her the Bavarian film award as "Best Newcomer."

Potente, so the story goes, was "discovered" as an actress by a casting agent who saw her in a bar, followed her into the toilets, and asked her to describe herself in one sentence.

Although "The Bourne Identity" is Potente's first Hollywood picture, she is no stranger to the U.S. At 17, she lived in Houston, Texas, as part of a high school exchange programme, and she later studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York.

But despite budding success in the U.S., Potente assured a German magazine recently that Germany would always remain her home. Although Matt Damon was a very nice chap, she said she missed German bread too much.