Pernilla August

The Rigor of the Swedish School

Pernilla August wasn't seeking international fame when she started in Stockholm theater. Her entry into professional film came through Ingmar Bergman in 1982 with Fanny and Alexander. On that shoot she played Maj, a nanny who had to move with a very specific physical limp. That physical limitation shaped her understanding of acting as a physical process rather than an intellectual one.

The relationship with Bergman was no fleeting affair. The director saw in her a composure that few young actors had in Sweden during the 1980s. So he chose her to star in The Best Intentions in 1992, a play written by Bergman himself about his parents' lives.

It was the role that earned her the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.

But success in France did not push her to chase desperate contracts with major studios. Pernilla preferred to stay at the Dramaten, the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Stockholm, where she refined a dry, direct style. For her, the craft was about being present, not about being a celebrity.

From Sci-Fi to Gritty Realism

George Lucas called her in 1999 to play Shmi Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. Many critics did not understand what an actress of European prestige was doing in a spaceship blockbuster. She accepted the role out of technical curiosity and for the chance to work in a massive production environment.

And the gamble paid off.

Her role as Anakin Skywalker's mother extended to Attack of the Clones in 2002. She shot her scenes in the deserts of Tunisia under a scorching sun and surrounded by green screens. Even in that artificial setting, she maintained a restrained acting style that stood out from the rest of the digital cast.

In 2010 she decided it was time to move to the other side of the camera. Her directing debut with Beyond was a hard-hitting look at alcoholism and family trauma in rural Sweden. The film won the Venice Film Festival's Critics' Week prize and showed that her eye as a filmmaker was just as sharp as her work as an actress.

Maturing behind the camera

Directing requires a kind of control that Pernilla August had already mastered after decades of theater. In 2016 she took charge of the adaptation of A Serious Game, an impossible love story set in the early twentieth century. Filming was challenging because the atmosphere of the era had to be recreated on a tight budget.

But directing did not pull her away from acting altogether.

In 2021 she accepted the role of Queen Kristina in the series Young Royals. The Netflix production allowed her to explore the rigidity of the monarchy from a contemporary perspective. Her contract for this series ran through 2024, the year the storyline of the third season concluded.

Before starting a project, she reads the script looking for the silences more than the dialogue. In 2023 she took part in the series Blackwater, a thriller based on the novel by Kerstin Ekman. Filming took place on natural locations in the Jämtland province, where temperatures dropped below minus ten degrees Celsius. The production used Arri Alexa cameras with vintage lenses to achieve a grainy visual texture.