Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen (b. Vesterbro, Denmark, 1881 – d. 1972, Frederiksberg, Denmark) was a Danish silent film actress who was one of the most popular leading ladies of the 1910s and one of the first international movie stars when she moved to Germany. Seventy of Nielsen’s 74 films were made in Germany, where she was known simply as Die Asta (The Asta). Nielsen founded her own film studio in Berlin during the 1920s but returned to Denmark in 1937 after the rise of Nazism in Germany.
