Golden Globe nominee Helena Zengel was catapulted to stardom as a child actor in Nora Fingscheidt’s System Crasher and as she moves into her first adult role she has had time to reflect.

“I watched System Crasher the other day and was thinking it’s crazy what such a young child did,” she told Deadline promoting her new series Westend Girl at Seriencamp. “It doesn’t feel like me. I watch it and think she was so young. You start to think about it more and more as you get older.”

Zengel, who won awards for the highly-rated System Crasher aged just 11 and was Golden Globe nominated soon after for Paul Greengrass’ News of the World opposite Tom Hanks, is feeling particularly reflective as both she and her character in Westend Girl enter adulthood.

Westend Girl, which had a glitzy premiere in Cologne last night, follows Ronja, who has grown up leading a sheltered lifestyle with wealthy parents but as she turns 18 finds out they have been running a drug ring. Suddenly she is thrust into a game whose rules she hasn’t yet learned, with police breathing down her neck.

Zengel herself turns 18 today and she told Deadline she “loved the chance to do a coming-of-age” show. “I loved being a young woman in a project for the first time,” she added. “I remember I’d just come back from a party when I went to the casting. This role takes me on a journey from being a young child to a woman and this is what I’m doing in my private life. Being in love for the first time, becoming older, making decisions, all grown up stuff. A lot of what the character had to do is what you do when you become 18.”

Zengel said this led to “much more work because you’re not just a child, you’re making a timeline,” but she was up for the challenge. “I thought about where I might be similar to my character and where the differences are,” she explained. “There were many times when I felt like me as Helena would have reacted more confrontationally, and then Ronja is more sensitive.”

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