Margit Carstensen is a German theatre and film actress, best known outside Germany for roles in the works of film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Carstensen is best known outside Germany for the many film and television productions of Rainer Werner Fassbinder in which she acted. She played leading roles in the Fassbinder films The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), her best-known role for Fassbinder; Martha (1974), with Karlheinz Böhm, analysing a traditional marriage in a contemporary set