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Good Housekeeping
August 2003
Her Secret Weapon: She plays a wily double agent on the TV hit Alias. Now
Lena Olin is ready to reveal what makes her happy in real life
by Kate Coyne
In their native Sweden, actress Lena Olin and her husband, director Lasse Hallstrom, are the equivalent of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt - a dazzling, talented twosome who frequently attract stares.
But in New York City on an early spring day, Olin breezes into a hotelrestaurant and nary a head turns. Despite an Oscar-nominated performance in 1989's Enemies: A Love Story and high-profile movie roles opposite Daniel Day-Lewis and Robert Redford, Olin has only recently gained prominence on this side of the Atlantic, as a shifty secret agent on the ABC hit Alias. Hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing no makeup, Olin is clad in a hooded sweatshirt and baggy cargo pants. The mother of a teenager, she could pass for one herself.
Though Alias is shot mostly in Hollywood, Olin and her family make their home in suburban Bedford, New York. "When Lasse and I moved here from Sweden, there was no way we could live in Los Angeles," she says. "I would have felt like
I was raising our kids [son August, 16, and daughter Tora, eight] in a film studio."
Hallstrom - who directed The Cider House Rules and the romantic Chocolat, costarring his wife - has just left for Vancouver to work on a new film. Ten minutes after she sits down, Olin answers her cell phone and lets loose a girlish
stream of whispered Swedish; when she hangs up, she's glowing. "That was Lasse," she says. "We're trying to figure out when we'll see each other. I was going to go there this weekend, but our little girl has a cold, and I don't want to make her travel."
Intimate phone calls aside, being apart from her husband takes its toll. "All we want to do is be together," Olin says with a sigh. "For the first two years after we moved here, neither of us worked, and we did everything together. We went to the store, the gym, dropped the kids off at school together. Our friends would moan, 'You two are never apart!' and we'd say,
'Yeah, that's why we got married! To be with each other!'"
The couple will have a long-awaited reunion this summer when they take their children to Sweden. Then Olin will be back in front of the cameras as Irina Derevko, mother of Jennifer Garner's character on Alias.
Olin is also appearing in the recently released movie Hollywood Homicide, as Harrison Ford's love interest. The role is lighter and more romantic than anything she's done recently. "I loved that I got to be the wide-eyed optimist, the one who believes in true love," she says.
In real life, Olin hardly seems a pessimist - even when talk turns to getting older in the age-obsessed entertainment business. "I feel very much alive, and I feel very good about myself as a woman," she says. "You know, I was never really good at being young. In my early 20s, I was shy and awkward. But I realize now that I'm really good at being grown-up."
© Good Housekeeping
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