Marlies Draeger's mother ran a fashion salon, Draeger herself worked first as an accountant, later as a model, and had topless photographs for the men's magazine Privat9. In the mid-1960s she took acting lessons in Göttingen and was engaged for first tasks in front of the camera by director Georg Tressler in his series Wenn die Musik nicht. During the filming in 1966, she met her colleague Michael Maien, with whom she lived for several months, until she entered into a long-term relationship with the Göttingen wood dealer Jürgen Roloff in November of the same year.