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Lena Olin born in Sweden, had already made a successful career as an actress before she came to Hollywood. The daughter of Swedish actor Stig Olin, who starred in several early Ingmar Bergman films, she made her film debut in Karleken (1980) while still in drama school. Like her father, Olin worked with Bergman and appeared in three of his films, including After the Rehearsal (1984) in a role Bergman created especially for her. Olin's first English-language role as the sexy mistress of a prominent Czech surgeon in 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' (1988) is also her best known, though in 1989, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for portraying the survivor of a Nazi death camp in Paul Mazursky's Enemies, a Love Story. In 1994, she played one of her more off-beat parts, a lady mobster who takes on would-be assassin Gary Oldman in 'Romeo is Bleeding'. Back in Sweden, Olin is a promininent member of the Royal Dramatic Theater where she is known for appearing in a wide vareity of productions ranging from Shakespeare, to Strindberg and ontemporary works.

Oscar-nominated for her supporting turn as Masha, Olin continued her penchant for films with a background of political upheaval, acting opposite Robert Redford in the Sydney Pollack-directed "Havana" (1990), a disappointing "Casablanca"-like tale of Cuba in the late 50s, perhaps unjustly maligned as a complete bomb. After making her New York theater debut with a moving turn as the tormented titular character in a 1991 Swedish-language production of "Miss Julie", directed by Bergman, she returned to the screen opposite Richard Gere in the dubious "Mr. Jones" (1993). She fared far better as the standout of that year's "Romeo Is Bleeding", playing her most outrageous role to date, a psychopathic, Russian assassin (with thighs of steel) who even cuts off her arm to evade capture. She also sandwiched two European flicks, the moribund "The Night & the Moment" (1994) and the slick Swedish actioner "Hamilton" (1998), around Sidney Lumet's "Night Falls on Manhattan" (1997), in which she romanced Andy Garcia.

In Teresa Connelly's "Polish Wedding" (1998) she relished her role as a strong-willed mother of five who, although her family means everything to her, still tries to capture the excitement of her youth through illicit love. Olin had a small role as psychiatrist to Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) in the superhero send-up "Mystery Men" (1999) and then performed her determined hellcat routine with gusto as a leader of a satanic cult for Roman Polanski's "The Ninth Gate", its US release moved back three months to March 2000 to give a little more separation between it and another supernatural picture also starring Johnny Depp, Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow".

The actress finally achieved the long-held dream of working with her director husband Lasse Hallstrom on "Chocolat" (2000), a delicious morality play with a subtle message about tolerance. Cast as Josephine, a kleptomaniac and abused wife who is shunned by the townspeople, Olin was terrific in the part, particularly in the character's transformation from mousy doormat to chocolate maker under the watchful eye of the mysterious Vianne (Juliette Binoche). Having done some of her best work in years, she followed up as the maternal vampire Maharet in "Queen of the Damned" (2001), based on Anne Rice's novel.