Lena Olin

A powerful and beautiful Swedish actress in the tradition of Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann, Lena Olin first came to prominence in Sweden as a "Bergman actress," working in plays and films directed by the great Ingmar Bergman. The child of actors-her father, Stig Olin, appeared in Bergman films during the 1940s and 50s-she gravitated to the profession in an attempt to overcome her crippling shyness, and though she failed her first audition for the Royal Dramatic Theater school, Bergman saw enough to cast her in a small role in his "Face to Face" (1976). She went on to appear in "The Adventures of Picasso" (1978) and acted for Bergman in "Fanny and Alexander" (1982). In "After the Rehearsal" (1984), she played Anna, a character written expressly for her. Her role as an actress who infuriates her director by getting pregnant while working on one of August Strindberg's plays prefigured actual events when her own pregnancy would complicate a Bergman production of Strindberg's "A Dream Play."