Femina, September 2011
By: CHRISTER OLSSON
Photo: ANNA-LENA AHLSTRÖM
Helen Sjöholm may be one of the stars in the upcoming blockbuster Simon and the Oaks – but privately, she faces a much greater adventure. Femina’s Christer Olsson met her in the middle of the calm before the storm.
The first time I saw Karin stand there in her 40’s kitchen on the rugged west coast wiping a plate in the movie Simon and the Oaks I didn´t recognize Helen Sjöholm.
– But that might be good, she says. I hardly recognize myself in certain situations and contexts. I’ve only seen the movie once – and it was really strange to see something I did more than a year ago. But I was incredibly touched by the scenes that I’m not in myself.
We sit on the patio at Helen’s renovated, red wooden house outside Stockholm and talk. In the slope down towards the water is an apple tree and at the waterfront is a private jetty. Helen has made tea and coffee and we´re eating cheese sandwiches with caviar together with a very determined curly dark-haired four-year old Spiderman, who prefers meringues and cinnamon bun, which he quickly pulls out into a soggy spiral. The idyll falls over the garden like a warm safety blanket. I glance at the softly rounded tummy under Helen’s black dress, which heralds twins around year-end and ask if she wants to do more movies.
– I don´t know what I expect after this. Life is a bit special right now because we are suddenly going to be a three-child family… I have stopped thinking about anything else, now this is what´s going on.
Her face breaks into a warm smile.
– Though it’s silly to say that I don´t expect anything, I’m very curious about the movie, I want to see it again, to get a feel for what became of it. I think it was a very exciting job and I would gladly do it again. But it isn´t possible to decide anything with two children in my belly.
The filming she describes as tricky.
– I’m quite sweeping in my expressions, because I´m used to work in big salons with large audiences – and that can be tricky at first. It takes a while to take down the gestures, to adapt to that the camera is so close.
Helen plays the mother of Simon, who grows up on the outskirts of Gothenburg during World War II. He feels like an outsider and different and against his parents’ approval he applies to schools that a working class kid normally doesn´t come close to. There he meets Isak, the son of a wealthy jewish bookseller who has fled the persecutions in Germany…
It´s Helen’s third movie, but her first starring role. For the first time she doesn’t sing a tone – on the contrary, Simon teases her because she can’t sing. In addition she’s portraying a woman from 30 to 50 years old.
– We started with fairly difficult scenes in the middle of the story. To simultaneously keep the entire course of events present, it´s a big challenge. I had to trust the director, Lisa Ohlin, and others around me, to remind me of where I was in the story. Should I be 30 or 50 in the body?
Helen often says that she only gets “feel sorry for-roles” as the abused wife in As it is in Heaven or as Kristina in Björn and Benny’s emigration story – but this time she is not as sure.
– Certainly there are such parts – it´s a sad story in many ways – but Karin is a complex person. I think she wants to see herself as a good person, but there´s a lot in her behavior that is controlled by fear and to some extent self-interest. To only feel sorry for her, I can’t do that.
Spiderman Ruben has begun to tire of the adults ‘nagging’ and Helen goes into the house to search for kids’ game Bolibompa on the computer. When she comes back, I’ve figured out that she must have been pregnant when I met her in Mora this summer with Benny Andersson Band – though she hid it under a wide red dress.
– I was terribly nauseous. Sat in the caravan eating crackers all the time. It was tough at first. Though it’s a trifle considering what it´s all about! She smiles palely.
– It´s a big thing to get two children. We have no family history on that, and there was no reason to believe that it would be. It’s cool how life can surprise you – you think you know how things will float along for a while, and then it becomes quite different.
The twins were not totally planned then?
– Nothing has been straight forward with us. It feels really good – and at my age! I´m starting to become an old hag, she laughs.
– I didn´t understand until now what a gift it is that it works. It´s only when you get older and people around you have problems that you begin to realize that, okay, things turned out like this, so in that way it feels even more like a favor! But you may come back in a year, then I might not feel the same way…
Helen has always described herself as a seeker, but since she met David I’ve perceived her as more grounded each year that has passed. She agrees.
– Now it feels like the small life is big enough, but it takes time to discover that – and you need to wind down to see it. I´m not as restless anymore, you can’t do everything. Even if there hadn´t been children on the way now I would have needed to take it easy for a while.
She has a great summer behind her – with a lot of free time and only eight concerts with Benny Andersson Band. A summer that has already showed results in terms of the ABBA-scented En dag i sänder, which went straight up to the top spot on the Swedish charts.
– But for me the concerts are the main thing. I love doing that music live – that kind of music should be danced to.
Despite major productions like My Fair Lady and Aniara she never thinks she masters her job.
– I can say I did it well, but I can never be satisfied. However I can feel more or less safe. She goes silent.
– I have a great admiration for many people I work with and I get so easily affected by them – but you can’t be touched by yourself! It’s something you must deal with as (here, she can barely say the word)… an artist – that you still have a need to release something. I have pretty high demands of life in general and especially of myself. But that´s about to correct itself
– I can already with Ruben see that it´s impossible to look after everything the way I’m used to. And there’s a liberation in that, so I think that two more children might be great!
She can’t say quite when we’ll get to see her on stage again.
– You can’t work at a theater five days a week and have three small children at home – and I don´t want to! I have no desire at all to do that! I will certainly long to return eventually, but the first time I definitely want to stay at home. I have parents’ allowance, just like everyone else. Thanks Sweden – my, how good we have it.
HELEN SJÖHOLM GRANDITSKY
PROFESSION: Actor, artist. AGE: 41 years
FAMILY: Husband David Granditsky, son Ruben, 4 years. Expecting twins.
LIVES: In a house in Nacka, outside Stockholm.
CURRENT: In the winter we’ll see her as Karin in Simon and the Oaks, made from Marianne Fredriksson’s novel of the same name, against among others Bill Skarsgård. Premieres December 9.