Janina Elkin

Janina Elkin was born on 20 December 1982 in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR. She attended the State Dance Academy in Kiev. At the age of 10, she moved with her family to Heidelberg, Germany. She attended the State Ballet Academy in Mannheim, where she trained as a ballet dancer. With a scholarship, she studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City from 2001 to 2004. Since 2004 she has been working as an actress on stage as well as in film and television. From 2009 to 2010 she played the role of Baby in the musical Dirty Dancing in Berlin.

Elkin played her first major leading role in the feature film Bela Kiss: Prologue, released in Germany in January 2013.She became internationally known with her role in the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit.