Laura Berlin

The Face That Escaped the Runway

Laura Berlin didn't go looking for the camera. The camera found her in front of a riding school when she was only 15 years old. A modeling agent saw something in her bone structure that Chanel and Hugo Boss would later exploit on the runways of Milan and Paris during her teenage years.

But modeling quickly felt too small for her. In 2009, she decided she preferred delivering lines in front of the camera to simply posing in haute couture.

The transition was abrupt and painless.

Her first professional job was the lead role in the TV movie Schneewittchen. Playing Snow White gave her the visibility she needed for the German industry to stop seeing her as a catalog face. The gamble paid off, because her cool composure in front of the spotlight turned out to be a powerful acting tool.

Between 2013 and 2016, she took part in the young adult trilogy Rubinrot, Saphirblau and Smaragdgrün. She played Charlotte Montrose, and it was her first taste of fan frenzy on a large scale. The adaptations of Kerstin Gier's novels performed well at the box office and allowed her to secure her status in the European market before turning twenty-five.

Conquering Normandy from the Couch

Her big break came in 2022 with the premiere of Vikings: Valhalla. She didn't need any tricks to land the role of Emma of Normandy. She recorded her audition at home during the months of lockdown and sent the video without much hope.

It worked because she understood the power of stillness.

Emma of Normandy is a character who survives three kings, and Berlin had to learn to work with silence. In the Netflix series, her performance moved away from physical action to focus on political manipulation. She went from being a well-known actress in Germany to a recognizable face in more than 190 countries at the same time.

In 2020, she also starred in the series Breaking Even. She played a lawyer in a corporate drama about self-driving cars and technology. It was a much more technical register than the period dramas that usually fill her international filming schedule.

The Strategy of Silence

Berlin manages her career from her base in Berlin and keeps a careful distance from the industry noise in Los Angeles. She prefers European shoots, where the production pace allows for more involvement in rehearsals. Because for her, control over the script is non-negotiable.

Before filming each scene, she usually goes over her lines alone. She is not a method actress, but she has a German discipline that sometimes intimidates her castmates.

Rigor is her personal brand.

In 2024, she finished filming the third season of Vikings: Valhalla. The production had an estimated budget of five million dollars per episode. During the months of filming in Ireland, the actress had to sit through three-hour daily hair sessions to fit the complex structures of her royal headpieces.