Thea Sofie Loch Næss

The face Oslo couldn't hold on to

Thea Sofie Loch Næss made her film debut in 2014 with a role that carried her own name in Natt til 17. The Eirik Svensson film captured urban teen life in Norway and caught the eye of casting directors with her icy gaze. She was 17 years old and had no intention of blending into the background.

She didn't need decades of academic training to understand how the camera works. Her process has always been more intuitive than technical, and that natural ease let her move from local productions to big-budget projects in no time. In 2016, she took part in Birkebeinerne, a historical action film where Norway's extreme weather was another character.

That was no stroke of luck.

But the Nordic market quickly felt too small for her. In 2018, she moved to London to shoot the third season of The Last Kingdom, where she played Skade, a bloodthirsty seer who moved her away from the image of a vulnerable teenager. That role gave her visibility in the Anglo-American market and allowed her to work on sets where the budget per episode surpassed anything she had seen in her country.

The international industry took four years to come knocking at her door in a big way.

### Maturity Behind the Viking Shield

And although Skade was the character who generated the most screenshots on social media, Loch Næss preferred to seek out projects with less mud and more psychological nuance. In 2019, she starred in Hjerteslag, a series exploring the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. She spent three years filming this production, and the format allowed her to develop a far denser dramatic arc than in her previous work.

In 2021, she returned to the suspense genre with Delete Me. The series tackled cancel culture and the pressure of beauty standards on social media, themes the actress knows firsthand from her own public exposure. She understands that her image is a work tool, but she makes sure it isn't the only engine driving her career in European cinema.

In 2023, she took part in A Year of Cold Days, directed by Leyla Bouzid. The shoot marked a complete change of pace, moving away from the linear Nordic storytelling. The production focused on atmosphere and silence, requiring her to hold long scenes with just a couple of lines of dialogue.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2024, she took on the challenge of playing Marianne Ihlen in the series So Long, Marianne. The story follows the relationship between Leonard Cohen and his muse on the Greek island of Hydra during the 1960s. Loch Næss had to work on her accent and study Ihlen's biography to avoid a cheap imitation of a real person.

In 2024, post-production on this international series wrapped up with an estimated budget of five million euros per episode. The actress signed a contract that included specific clauses on the use of her image in promotional material derived from the Greece shoot. Filming wrapped after six months of work on locations in three different countries.