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Swedish Johanna in new
Hollywood film
After one night stand she is acting in Mike Figgis' new drama
By
Gunnar Nordström
Los Angeles. She
had a part in Mike Figgis's One Night Stand.
Johanna
Torell, 27, is also in his new movie, which is tentatively titled
"Short Stories".
After three
years in Hollywood Johanna is on the way to the big breakthrough.
-- I can
thank Figgis for it. These roles have really helped me.
She came to
Los Angeles in 1994 to attend three months at Lee Strasberg's theatre
school.
It became two
years.
-- It felt
so right, suddenly everything fell into place for me.
The part
was created for her
Johanna Torell
is a Stockholm girl and had worked at an upper level compulsory/lower
secondary school teacher for two years before she packed her bag
for the USA.
-- Sure I had
played some amatuer theatre as a child, but in Sweden I didn't think
about being an actor. Now, afterwards, I realized that this is what
I want to do.
She got the
part of the doctor in "One night stand" after having auditioned
for another part.
-- Then I heard
nothing for two months, and when the call came Figgis had created
the part of the doctor for me.
"One night
stand", which was recently released in Sweden, has a strong cast
with Wesley Snipes, Nastassja Kinski, Robert Downey, Jr., Kyle
MacLachlen, Ming-Na Wen and Julian Sands.
-- I had seen
"Leaving Las Vegas" of course -- but I hurried to rent Figgis's
other films when I got the part.
-- Nastassja
Kinski was very kind and encouraging when she had seen the day's
dailies, and Robert Downey Jr also supported me enormously during
the shooting.
Got the
script one year earlier
In the book,
with the script -- which is now out in the US -- there are three
pictures of Johanna.
In October
last year she traveled to England, where Mike Figgis shot part of
his new film in Newcastle for two weeks.
-- He gave
me the script a year earlier, asked me to read it and wanted to
know what I thought.
The working
title of the film then was "Death and the loss of sexual innocence".
Unconventional
stories
-- Julian Sands
has the leading part and I play his wife. It is a modern "Adam and
Eve story", with Saffron Burrows co-starring.
Johanna likes
Mike Figgis' way of making film.
-- He concentrates
on human fates and makes unconventional stories. And in England
we were a small team who worked intensively together.
Now Johanna
reads a lot of scripts and auditions for new roles.
-- It would
be fun to do something in Sweden too. I don't know how long I will
stay in Los Angeles. I take one year at a time.
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