Sofia Helin

Early life and education

Sofia Helin was born in Hovsta in Örebro, Närke. Her father was a salesman and her mother was a nurse. When she was ten days old, her grandmother and her six-year-old brother were in a car accident; her grandmother survived, but her brother was killed. She graduated with a degree in philosophy from Lund University. From 1994-1996, she went to Calle Flygares theatre school and graduated from the Stockholm Theatre Academy in 2001. She was brought up in Linghem, outside Linköping but in 2015 was living in Stockholm.

Career

Her films include At Point Blank (Rånarna) (2003) playing the leading role of Chief Inspector Klara. In 2004, she took the leading role of Mia in Masjävlar, and she was nominated for a Guldbagge award. Followed by, in 2007, the leading role of Cecilia Algottsdotter in Arn, an adaptation of Jan Guillou's The Knight Templar, about Arn Magnusson. She also featured in the Swedish animated film Metropia (2009).

Since 2012, she has become famous outside Sweden as a result of the successful three crime drama series, The Bridge, in which she played Saga Norén, the homicide detective from Malmö. In the UK, the series attracted more than a million viewers per episode and she has been called a role model for women with autism. She said she would play in a fourth series. The fourth season is said to air in Nordic countries in the beginning of 2018.

In 2015, she starred in a Danish science fiction film called Fang Rung and acted in a British/German TV series directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, shot in Prague, about divided Berlin in the 1970s and called Berlin der geteilte Himmel (Back to Back) in which she spoke in both German and English.

Personal life

Helin is married to Daniel Götschenhjelm, a priest in the Church of Sweden and former actor whom she met at Drama school. She has two children—a boy, Ossian, and a girl, Nike, who were ten and four years old respectively in 2014.

Helin’s facial scar was caused by a cycling accident when she was 24.