Lena Olin Biography

Lena Maria Jonna Olin (born March 22, 1955) is an internationally acclaimed Swedish actress. She was born in Stockholm as the youngest of three children. Her father, Stig Olin, was a singer, composer and an actor and appeared in several of Ingmar Bergman's films. Also her mother, Britta Holmberg, was an actress. Her brother is the Swedish singer Mats Olin.

After studying acting at the drama school of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, Olin performed on stage classic plays of Shakespeare and Ibsen and appeared in smaller roles of several Swedish films directed by Bergman. It was he who cast her for the first time, after she had not passed her first audition because of her shyness. Later she acted at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, directed by Bergman.

Olin's international debut in a lead role was in the 1984 Swedish film After the Rehearsal, which directed by Bergman. The year before she appeared in Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. In 1988, Olin starred opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in her first American film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and became a well-known and respected actress. In 1989, she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Enemies: A Love Story, in which she portrayed the survivor of a Nazi camp.

Olin is today a prominent member of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, where she began her career as an aspiring young actress. She appears in many different plays, from classic to contemporary.

Gave birth to her son, August Ramberg, in 1984. His father was fellow Swedish actor Örian Ramberg, with whom she lived for several years.

In 1994, she married Lasse Hallström, a Swedish film director with whom she collaborated on the 2000 film Chocolat, which received five Academy Award nominations. They had a daughter, Tora Hallström in 1995.

From 2002 to 2003, Olin appeared opposite Jennifer Garner in her first television role on the second season of the American television series Alias. For her work on the series as Irina Derevko, Olin received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2003. Olin received immense critical acclaim for her part in Alias - particularly her chemistry with Victor Garber, who played her former husband and sometime-enemy Jack Bristow - and was rumored to have been offered a salary in excess of $100,000 per episode to remain part of the cast. She left the show after her first and only season, however, to spend more time with her family in New York.

In May 2005, Olin returned for a two-episode appearance at the end of the show's fourth season. She may make a few additional appearances in the future.

She currently lives in New York with her husband and two children