Who is that guy?
Who is that … gal? Oh, its Lena Olin!
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I’ve noticed for some time now that I never hear anyone talk about character actresses. We hear about character actors. I mean, there’s tons of actors that concentrate their careers on roles that are more like flavor enhancers than the primary ingredients in a cinematic recipe. So, I was thinking about this and trying to come up with some character actresses … and found its really tough. After much thought I finally came up with one, and I’m sure there’s more, in the form of Lena Olin. I would bet most people probably haven’t heard of her, or at least they’ve seen her before but wouldn’t be able to tell you who she is. As it turns out, she’s a really great and often surprising actress that tends to shy away from really big productions. I think my favorite role she has taken on was as Mona Demarkov, the one-armed prosthetic-wearing Russian hit-woman seductively playing cat and mouse with Gary Oldman in Peter Medak’s Romeo is Bleeding. She was so much fun in this modern take on the seedy film noir genre, playing a cold-hearted, dark humored and awkwardly sexy mercenary. She would later return in form to take on Irina Derevko, Sidney Bristow’s dangerous double-agent mother in J.J. Abram’s network television series Alias. However, this Swedish-born under-appreciated starlett has done her fair share of films in between. |
| Sabina … Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988); Masha… Paul Mazursky’s Enemies: A Love Story (1989); Bobby Duran … Sydney Pollack’s Havana (1990); Dr. ‘Libbie’ Bowen … Mike Figgis’ Mr. Jones (1993); Jadzia… Theresa Connelly’s Polish Wedding (1998); Dr. Annabel Leek… Kinka Usher’s Mystery Men (1999); Liana Telfer … Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999); Josephine Muscat… *Lasse Hallstrom’s Chocolat (2000); Maharet… Michael Rymer’s Queen of the Damned (2002); Marybeth Fitzgerald… Matthew Ryane Hoge’s The United States of Leland (2003); Andrea… Lasse Hallstrom’s Casanova (2005); Lilith Beresford … Joby Harold’s Awake (2007) [*Lena Olin is married to Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom.] |
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