Berlin - A German actress was taken to hospital after an artist injured her breasts while trying to cut open her bra with a chainsaw during a rehearsal for a stage show, she told a newspaper on Wednesday.

"It was the worst moment of my life. I thought, Sibylle, you're going to die," the actress, former porn star Sibylle Rauch, told Bild newspaper.

The chainsaw operator, performance artist Marko Koenig, said Rauch was lying down during the rehearsal on Monday and suddenly bent forward just as he was applying the saw to her bra.

"I couldn't pull back the chainsaw quickly enough and cut her breast and stomach. It was terrible," he told Bild.

The hospital in Karlsruhe, south-west Germany, where Rauch was treated, declined to give details of her injuries. "We are not authorised to comment on our patients," a spokesperson said.