20 Questions: Lena Olin

Lena Olin is complicated and erotic. As Masha, a concentration-camp survivor in "Enemies, a Love Story," she portrays neurotic love. Earlier, as Sabina in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," she spent several memorable moments wearing mainly a hat. In "Havana," with Robert Redford, she melts through her co-star's famous cool persona. Contributing Editor David Rensin met with Olin, who lives in Sweden, during one of her rare visits to Los Angeles. She greeted him at her hotel-room door. "Although her English was excellent," he says, "she easily resorted to sign language or French to find the proper word. She was as free with her opinions as she was with her cigarettes."

1.

[Q] Playboy: Many of your films seem to take place during times of political upheaval. Is that coincidental?

[A] Olin: I'm not going for the political thing by itself. I'm interested in films about human changes. My most recent films take place in very politically strained times. It's not like in Sweden, where things have been the same for years. In these films, people's emotions are more flagrante and things happen that wouldn't have happened had the political situation been different.

2.

[Q] Playboy: You've worked with directors such as Ingmar Bergman, Sydney Pollack, Philip Kaufman and Paul Mazursky. What makes a good director good?

[A] Olin: An intelligent director waits to see what's going to happen. Sometimes directors think that they know what type of character you are. One director in Sweden always casts me in one type of character, which irritates me. This especially happens in Sweden, where we tend to work with the same directors, because the country is so small and there are so few directors. In this country, it seems like actors work with a director once, then never again. Sometimes you see wonderful relationships, like Scorsese and De Niro's, but they are rare.

3.

[Q] Playboy: What do you like most about the American film business?

[A] Olin: People are so capable. And compared with Swedish conditions, where we make so few films, your capacity is amazing. Also, there is not so much humbug about acting. In America, it's like, "Action!" In Sweden, it's more like, "Do you think we can do this now?" We sometimes make it heavier than it has to be. It frustrates me. Sweden is rigid. Nobody can yawn or make small talk fifteen minutes before a difficult take or a rehearsal. People here are serious, yet they have a looseness.

4.

[Q] Playboy: Does the perfect role exist?

[A] Olin: It might. I don't know. But I know actors who fight to do a character. They say that this is the character they want, and it doesn't matter who the director is. To me, it's always a combination of who is directing, who is acting, what the script is like. In America, they say, "Who is starring?" before they even mention the director. I've been lucky with all my directors. And there are those, like Bergman or Pollack or Scorsese, who could call me and say, "Here's a bunch of toilet paper that's going to be shot in six months. Would you do it?" Definitely. I wouldn't care about the script, because I'd know it was safe.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Do you trust people easily?

[A] Olin: In my work, it's easy; but I don't trust people easily in my private life. I look for security all the time, though I try to force myself not to, because I think it's false: There is no security. Yet there seem to be some people who have within themselves some kind of security that I envy. I have a room of my own, in myself, that I can walk into, and that's one kind of security for me. But I'm a very insecure person in many ways. I'm a worrier; therefore, everything is a challenge to me. I could end up sitting in a room just locking all the doors.

6.

[Q] Playboy: Acting is probably one of the least secure professions. Why do it?

[A] Olin: I feel the illusion of security when I act. All the inhibition, all the limits, everything disappears. Everything is possible. It's an urge, a need. And I like to do things that are hard. If it were easy to act, it wouldn't be fun or interesting anymore. It's so much joy. And it's so much pain. I act because that's my only way of really communicating with people.

7.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe in love?

[A] Olin: Yes and no. I don't really believe in friendship, either. But I believe that you connect with certain people, and that's very important. I believe in the chemistry of sexual attraction. It can be something we will throw everything away for. But what we call love, what we do movies about, what we do plays about, what we read books about--love in the commercial sense--I don't know. To me, ultimately, love is a way of living. It's not something you need another person for.

8.

[Q] Playboy: You're probably one of film's best examples of organic chemistry. Yet you've said that you don't really feel like an object of desire off camera. Is that professional humility?

[A] Olin: [Laughs] I always like it when people don't believe what I say. [Smiles] Nobody thinks of himself as an object of desire. In a relationship, if you want to be desired, then you feel like you're desired. You know what that's like: You wake up in the morning and you know that he wants you and you want him. But to walk around and have that sense? My private life is still so far away from those things.

9.

[Q] Playboy: Part of that private life is your four-year-old son, August, named after the playwright Strindberg. What does your son add to your life that wasn't there before?

[A] Olin: As children, we are so vulnerable to everything. Everything gets to us. If we see a movie about a puppy that gets hurt, we can cry all night. But then we grow up, and we can see somebody get run over on the street and we get sick for five (continued on page 134)Lena Olin(continued from page 113) minutes and then we go on. But when you have a child, you identify with someone who has no protection. You go back to the state of being a kid. August has also added meaning to my work. Now there's a point to being here; there's a reason to stay alive and sane. It's important now. He has to have his mother.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Do you need a husband? Are you looking to settle down?

[A] Olin: I'd like to find one guy, but "settle down" sounds like the wrong direction. I'd like to find one guy and go on. Maybe there is such a thing as a good marriage; I haven't seen it. Not with my parents nor among the people I know. But I believe it is possible.

Having a good marriage means you've met someone who sees the whole of you, who sees you emotionally. He doesn't have a fixed picture of "this is you and this is the way you have to stay, honey, or else I won't love you tomorrow if you turn out to be someone else." And you have to have the same sort of feelings for him. That would be wonderful.

11.

[Q] Playboy: For every troubled man who has ever loved a woman who keeps falling for jerks instead, explain the allure of making bad choices in love.

[A] Olin: Asking about the allure makes these things sound like some superficial attraction. There is a way of not being afraid of saying yes to things that we normally don't do because we're scared. We all want to be happy. We only want to say everything is good and fine, and that's dangerous. We are scared of so many sides of ourselves. We deny them and people can take advantage of this. So it's dangerous. Therefore, it becomes an allure, because we don't allow a real sense of the dark side of life, which we have. I don't mean to look for the dark things; we don't need to. But we need to watch out and see when it's dark. And let it be dark.

12.

[Q] Playboy: What makes a Swedish meatball Swedish?

[A] Olin: [Long laugh] I don't know what makes them Swedish! I haven't seen any meatballs other than Swedish ones. We have something called mother's meatballs. We put in celery and onion and ground meat--no bread crumbs. You can fry the onion with a little sugar and you can put some bubbling water in it. They're delicious. We don't serve them in sauce. We eat them with toothpicks.

13.

[Q] Playboy: For a long time, Scandinavian design was popular in America. What American custom has Sweden imported and taken to heart?

[A] Olin: Sweden is so influenced by American culture, especially now, since we have this parabolic thing for our television sets so we can see MTV and all the American films. In 1968, Sweden was still very anti-American, but by 1973, we'd begun to loosen up. To some extent, the American influence is positive, though when we get bad films, the violent ones, Swedish kids are fascinated by them. They become popular and I don't like that.

14.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any disadvantages to socialized medicine?

[A] Olin: No. It's wonderful. Of course, we pay those high taxes that make Americans faint. If you have a large income, you're taxed eighty percent. But it's changing in Sweden. There are people who talk about private hospitals, private medical care, and to me, that is dangerous. In Sweden, everyone gets taken care of in the best way. Day care is also socialized, and that's wonderful, because all kids go to the best day-care centers. But now people are starting private ones, and they get the best teachers, because they pay them more. I don't like private medicine or day-care centers. It creates a class society.

15.

[Q] Playboy: What should someone your age know about life and how did you learn it?

[A] Olin: One should never say that he knows anything, really. But my idea is that you should make an experience out of everything that is happening to you. Erland Josephson, the Swedish actor, and I have quarrels about traveling. I don't like to travel. He says traveling is the only way to learn. I contend that you could go to Thailand, to China and to California and still learn nothing. But you can go into your own bedroom and learn a lot about life. It depends on how you take things that are happening to you.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Bergman gave us death and strawberries and made Woody Allen laugh. What did he give you?

[A] Olin: He taught me that it's important that there be mystery about acting. There should be unpredictability. One shouldn't look at it too closely. You should care only about how to use your body, your voice. He's very practical and he taught me that at an early age.

17.

[Q] Playboy: How does a good Swedish girl survive the cold?

[A] Olin: Not easily. In the winter, it gets dark at three o'clock in the afternoon and doesn't get light until ten o'clock in the morning. You go to work, it's dark, and when you go back home, it's dark. However, I don't think that's the reason why people are so depressed in Sweden. We get depressed when the light comes back. It becomes so beautiful. We're so aware that it's for such a short moment. So it hurts. In America, you take it for granted that the sun is going to shine tomorrow. But in a country where it's dark and cold and there's snow, and suddenly, there's light--that's the moment when you get depressed. The nights in June, when it doesn't get dark, are very sensuous. There's a mystery in the air and it's beautiful.

18.

[Q] Playboy: Your performance in The Unbearable Lightness of Being probably did more for the women's hat industry than any other single factor. Under what circumstances do you wear a hat?

[A] Olin: Only when it's cold. [Smiles]

19.

[Q] Playboy: How intimate is your relationship with the camera?

[A] Olin: It's like throwing yourself naked into cold pure water. The camera is completely unprejudiced. It has never seen you before. It just registers what's happening and you can't hide anything. It's an ideal situation.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Should women be interesting or pure?

[A] Olin: What's pure? If it's inexperienced, that's uninteresting.

sweden's best-built export since the saab sheds light on the meatball, bad choices in love and the endless night