Lena wants to film in Sweden
Though she’s gotten used to big budgets and Hollywood trailers, Swedish film star Lena Olin wouldn’t mind turning in the glamour for a good movie project in Sweden. “Working in the U.S. can create a certain loneliness; to be back here (in Sweden) and close to a Swedish gang with whom you’re practically sitting in each others’ laps has been so much fun,” she says. The film Olin filmed in Sweden is “Hypnotisören” (“The Hypnotist”), directed by her husband Lasse Hallström—his first Swedish film after 25 years in the U.S. And for Olin, too, it’s been awhile. In 2005, she shot the film “Bang Bang Orangutang” with co-star Mikael Persbrandt, who is also her co-star in “Hypnotisören.” The two play a couple in crisis, about to separate when something terrible happens. “It’s quite a scary movie,” Olin explains. “It’s about hate and brutality. Simone gets involved in it all, but what I think is fun is that all throughout she is her own character, in spite of the fact that she’s in such an exposed position. What’s unusual for a thriller is how closely it follows the couple’s relation to each other.” The film is based on a novel by Lars Kepler. Olin and Hallström reside in a house outside New York and she feels that life as a Swede in the U.S. has changed her. “I’ve become Americanized in many ways. There’s something extroverted in the culture there that I think has been good for me, I was such an introvert when I first moved there. But in certain ways I’m still very Swedish. We aren’t as prudish as the Americans. And it is ingrained in me as a woman to be free, to dress as I want and to not subordinate myself, in that respect I am not changing.” For the Hallström-Olin family there are no normal days. But when all of them are at home, there’s a life that’s somewhat normal with house, home, cooking and walks in the nature. As for cooking, Olin reveals that her husband has become a vegan. “For him it was a metamorphosis, he was the kind of person who ate pork and mashed turnips and now he doesn’t even touch nuts or avocado. He’s amazed that not everybody eats like him, because if they did we could feed the entire world. And it is a relevant issue—why is it that we all don’t quit eating meat and only eat green stuff?” She herself could never give up indulgences like birthday cakes, however. “I’m a victim for that feeling that good food is what’s pleasant in life. For Lasse it’s easy, but I have to fight, although intellectually I agree with him.”