Cast Spotlight Lena Olin

"What's most interesting and most real to me in my work is to never make the role a complete character, because then you lose a part of the truth. I can't say that this person is just like this or like that. Because you can never do that with real people in real life, so if you try that on stage you lose the truth."

In Remember Me, Lena Olin has been cast as Tyler and Caroline’s mother Diane Hirsch.

Lena Olin was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the youngest of three children. Both of her parents were actors; her father had appeared in several early Ingmar Bergman films. She did very well in school and graduated with a 4.9 out of 5.0 score. When she was 19, Lena won the title of Miss Scandinavia. Before Lena decided to pursue acting, she found work as a substitute teacher in languages and as a nurse in a hospital. She even studied medicine for awhile.

Her first screen role was in the Ingmar Bergman film, Face to Face (1976). A family friend, Bergman was impressed enough by Lena that he would encourage her to study at Sweden's National Academy of Dramatic Art where she was accepted in 1976. She took her first major film role, Dolores in The Adventures of Picasso, while she was still attending the school. Graduating in 1979, Lena was involved for the next 14 years on stage with Sweden’s Royal Dramatic Theater. She won critical acclaim with performances as The Daughter in August Strindberg’s A Dream Play, Titania in Shakespeare’s A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream and Margarita in the stage adaption of Mikhail Bilgakov’s The Master and Margarita. She also had roles in several Ingmar Bergman productions, one was as the title character Julie in Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Another of her roles with Bergman, Cordelia in King Lear toured national theaters in Paris, Berlin, Oslo, Moscow, Copenhagen and London. During her time on the stage, she continued to take small film parts in both Bergman and Swedish Television's TV-Theatre Company films.

In 1984, Lena appeared in her first international film, bringing her into the world’s eye. She played the lead character Anna Engerman in Bergman’s After the Rehearsal (1984). The film was originally only supposed to be released in Sweden, but it found it’s way into other markets, including the United States. In 1988, Lena starred in her first English speaking role, that of Sabina in the internationally produced political film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) . Starring opposite Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche, she first caught the attention of the film’s executive producer ( Bertil Ohlsson) when he saw her in a London performance of King Lear in 1984. Ohlsson told producer Saul Zaentz who met Lena at a dinner party and was also taken with her. She finally met with the director, Philip Kaufman , and was given the role. Lena would be nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her efforts in this role.

Now recognized as a respected and talented actress, offers started coming in from Hollywood. Newly a mother, she would make sure her she spent as much time with her son as possible, including bringing him to the set, along with a nanny who would watch him while she was filming. Even though her son was the top priority, she still wanted to continue working.

Her next big film was Enemies – A Love Story (1989). In this film, Lena played Masha, a married woman who is having an affair with a holocaust survivor (Ron Silver) who is ghost writing for a rabbi. Anyone in the film industry who had not noticed Lena before, noticed her now. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and would win the New York Film Critics Circle Award for this role.

Still based in Sweden, Lena continued to win roles in a wide variety of films. Next up, was the Sydney Pollack directed film Havana (1990). Lena played the role of Roberta, a revolutionary in 1958 Havana, Cuba whose husband was killed trying to escape from prison. Her lover Jack, played by Robert Redford, tries to keep her out of danger. In her next role, she portrayed the seductive, dangerous hit woman Mona Demarkov in Romeo is Bleeding (1993). In Romeo, Lena actually did her own stunts and an action scene was nominated in 1994 for the MTV Movie Award’s Best Action Sequence.

In 1995, Lena and her new husband took the plunge and moved to the United States, settling with their family just north of New York City. She continued her film work with a wide variety of roles and co-stars. In 1996, she starred with Andy Garcia and Ian Holm in Night Falls in Manhattan (1996)in which a DA finds himself in the middle of a police corruption scandal. Interestingly, this film was directed by Sidney Lumet, who is the father of Remember Me screenwriter, Jenny Lumet. Sidney also wrote the screenplay for the Night Falls.

Other film roles include Dr Elizabeth Bowen, a doctor who falls in love with her patient (Richard Gere) in Mr. Jones (1993) and Dr Annabelle Leek in Mystery Men (1999). She portrayed the satanic cult leader Liana Tefler opposite Johnny Depp and Frank Langella in one of my favorite films, The Ninth Gate (1999).

In 2000, she teamed up with her husband, director Lasse Hallstrom for the film Chocolat. In this film, Lena portrayed Josephine Muscat who gets neighborly help at the chocolate shop. She was able to work again with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for this role.

She also portrayed the vampire Maharet opposite Stuart Townsend in Queen of the Damned (2002), the mother of a troubled youth (Ryan Gosling) in The United States of Leland (2003), the crazy radio host Ruby opposite Harrison Ford and Josh Harnett in Hollywood Homicide (2003) and as Andrea, a Venetian mother trying to find a husband for her daughter in Cassanova (2005). Heath Ledger, Jeremy Irons and Sienna Miller also starred in this romantic comedy.

From 2002 to 2005, Lena switched mediums from the big screen to the small screen. She took the role of KGB agent and Sidney Bristow’s (Jennifer Gardner) mother, Irina Derenko on the ABC series Alias. It was obvious from her portrayal of the hit woman in Romeo is Bleeding that Lena would be perfect for this role that introduced her to a younger audience. She was nominated for an Emmy in 2003 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.

More recently, Lena has been busy. In 2007, she portrayed the mother of a young man (Hayden Christensen) who found himself awake but paralysed during surgery, in the thriller Awake. She also had the small role of Ilana Mather in The Reader (2008). She has filmed another movie, a very small indie The Devil You Know, where she plays a reclusive ex-movie star with a secret. It appears that at this time, the film has not secured a distributor and no release dated has been scheduled.

Lena’s vast experience and her critical acclaim makes her a great addition to the cast of Remember Me.






To get to know other members of the cast, please check out some of the cast spotlights here: Remember Me Cast Spotlight




Sources:
lena-olin.com
IMBd.com
Wikipedia.com


Photo Sources:
Splash New Online.com
Sociallite Life.com
lena-olin.com