Brigitte Gisela Eva Schittenhelm was born on 17 March 1906 in Berlin, the daughter of Gretchen Gertrud Martha Schittenhelm (née Tews) and Edwin Alexander Johannes Schittenhelm. Helm's first role was that of Maria in Metropolis, which she began work on while only 18 years old. After Metropolis, Helm made over 30 other films, including talking pictures, before retiring in 1935. Her other appearances include The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), Alraune (1928), L'Argent (1928), Gloria (1931), The Blue Danube (1932), L'Atlantide (1932), and Gold (1934). Helm was considered for the title role in Bride of Frankenstein before Elsa Lanchester was given the role. She signed a ten-year contract with UFA in 1925.
Helm was involved in several traffic accidents, and was briefly imprisoned. According to the Nazi Party's Press Chief Obergruppenführer Otto Dietrich's book, The Hitler I Knew, Adolf Hitler saw that manslaughter charges against her from an automobile accident were dropped.
Helm married her second husband, Dr. Hugo Kunheim, an industrialist, after her film contract expired in 1935. Helm stated that she retired from films because she was "...disgusted with the Nazi takeover of the film industry..." In 1935, she moved to Switzerland, where she had four children with Kunheim. In her later years, she refused to grant any interviews concerning her film career.

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