Lena Maria Jonna Olin (born 22 March 1955) is a Swedish actress. She has been nominated for several acting awards, including a Golden Globe for The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) and an Academy Award for Enemies, A Love Story (1989). Other well-known films in which she has appeared include Chocolat (2000), directed by her husband Lasse Hallström, Queen of the Damned (2002), Casanova (2005) and The Reader (2008). Olin was also a main cast member in the second season (and a recurring guest star in later seasons) of the television series Alias. Olin starred in the Swedish sitcom Welcome to Sweden. Olin, the youngest of three children, was born in Stockholm, Sweden. An older brother died of cancer in 1960, 10 years old. She is the daughter of actress Britta Holmberg and director Stig Olin. She studied acting at Sweden's National Academy of Dramatic Art. In October 1974, at age 19, Olin was crowned Miss Scandinavia 1974 in Helsinki, Finland. Olin worked both as a substitute teacher and as a hospital nurse before becoming an actress. Olin performed for over a decade with Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre-ensemble (1980–1994) in classic plays by William Shakespeare and August Strindberg, and appeared in smaller roles of several Swedish films directed by Bergman and in productions of Swedish Television's TV-Theatre Company. Ingmar Bergman cast Olin in Face to Face (1976). Later, she acted at the national stage in Stockholm in several productions directed by Bergman, and with Bergman's production of King Lear (in which Olin played Cordelia) she toured the world—Paris, Berlin, New York, Copenhagen, Moscow and Oslo, among others. Critically acclaimed stage performances by Olin at Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre included the leading part as The Daughter in A Dream Play by Strindberg, Margarita in the stage adaption of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, Ann in Edward Bond's Summer, Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, the title role in Ingmar Bergman's rendition of Strindberg's Miss Julie, and her neurotic Charlotte in the contemporary drama Nattvarden (The Last Supper) by Lars Norén. In 1980, Olin was one of the earliest winners of the Ingmar Bergman Award, initiated in 1978 by the director himself, who was also one of the two judges. Olin's international debut in a lead role on film was in Bergman's After the Rehearsal (1984). Two years earlier, she had appeared in a small role in the same director's Fanny and Alexander. In 1988, Olin starred with Daniel Day-Lewis in her first major part in an English speaking and internationally produced film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, followed by Sydney Pollack's Havana (1990), Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate (1999), and many others. In 1989, Olin 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 German Nazi camp. In 1994 Olin starred in Romeo Is Bleeding and played what is perhaps her most extreme character to date; the outrageous hit woman Mona Demarkov—still one of the actress's most popular portrayals on film. Olin and director Lasse Hallström collaborated on the film Chocolat (2000), which received five Academy Award nominations, and on Casanova (2005).

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