Introducing exclusive interview with Laura Birn 2025

Exclusive interview with Laura Birn

There’s something magnetic about Laura Birn. It’s not loud, not performative—just deeply real. Whether she’s inhabiting a futuristic world on Apple TV+’s Foundation or bringing a quiet intensity to art-house roles, she moves through her characters with a kind of emotional precision that lingers long after the screen fades to black.

With the third season of Foundation releasing on July 11th, Laura returns to a role that’s grown in complexity—and recognition. Her work is reaching new global audiences, yet she remains unmistakably rooted: thoughtful, instinctive, and tuned into the parts of storytelling that live below the surface.

Talent LAURA BIRN
Photography ANASTASIA & SASHA LAUKART
Text NATALIA LEZHENINA
Styling ILLIA KULISHOV
Make-up and hair PHILIPP VERHEYEN

Location VELT STUDIO
MUA’s assistant MARIANA COLMENARES
Stylist’s assistant HIBA FARFA
Light NanLite
Special thanks to PREMIER

You move so seamlessly between languages and cultures—do you ever feel like a different version of yourself depending on where you’re performing?

Absolutely! I think one of the joys of placing yourself in unknown situations and surroundings is that it always brings surprising aspects of yourself to the surface. I’ve sometimes described myself as a wild card when working abroad—a wild card for myself, I mean. You’re not so much in control of yourself, and you’re also not in control of how you see yourself or how you think others will perceive you. Using a language that isn’t your native tongue somehow creates this free space where your intuition works harder when you don’t have control over every word you say. I believe that energies affect us powerfully, and different productions inevitably have their own distinct energy. This isn’t always tied to culture or language, though—every artistic work group develops its own energy, and depending on the chemistry, you might find yourself settling into a completely different position. I love that we all carry multiple versions of ourselves within us, and you can never know when entering a new group which version will emerge or what your role will be.

What does silence mean to you on set? As an actress who conveys so much without words, how do you craft those moments?

I love the moments between words. As humans, we communicate so much more than what we’re able to articulate. I feel like I´m often clumsy at expressing my feelings with words, but my body language and energy reveal far more than what I actually say. I think this is fascinating in character work as well.

Was there ever a moment where you felt like walking away from it all? What kept you in the work?

No, I love acting! To be honest, in my youth there was a period when I had committed to many projects purely for the joy of doing something, anything, even though they didn’t feel very meaningful to me. For a while I lost my joy and became fed up with myself—nothing ignited me anymore. I turned down many jobs, and during that time I had to ask myself what truly excites me. Eventually I found myself really missing acting, and fortunately was able to continue working. I realized something about myself: that passion—shared passion—is everything to me. Indifference robbed the joy from making art. When starting a new project, it’s always impossible to predict the outcome, but it’s really important to know why you yourself want to be involved. There can be millions of reasons, but it’s crucial to listen to your own intuition and values.

How do you prepare for a role that requires emotional intensity—but also demands that you protect your own spirit?

For me the key here is your loved ones. Family and friends. I think your own spirit can and should be challenged, but ultimately when things start feeling too unstable, I always have people I can be completely open with, scream and laugh with, people I can unload my insecurities and shaky feelings onto. Acting often dances around shame, which is part of its thrill and excitement, but sometimes operating in areas of uncertainty can get under your skin. That’s when friends and family very quickly bring you back to what’s truly important in life—they remind you of who you are.

Which part of acting still feels mysterious to you—even after all these years?

Collective intuition. It’s a mysterious realm in making art—you can’t calculate it in advance. There are so many variable factors, starting from what’s going on in each person’s life to what kind of weather it is and what dreams everyone had the night before. Energy is created and generated each time, and it always feels magical when that shared flow happens, and something inexplicable occurs. Yet by repeating the same formula, this same thing won’t necessarily happen the next day. I cherish the idea that artists shouldn’t have thick skin but really thin skin—so they can sensitively sense the energies around them. This of course acquires absolute trust within the group. At its best, this leads to a collective energy charge that creates something unique.

Has playing different lives ever blurred the lines in your own? Do characters ever echo in your body after the shoot ends?

Yes, definitely. I don’t believe in getting stuck in a role, but when you’re turning things over in your mind for months on end, they can’t help but affect your own mindset and thought patterns. I think blurred lines are fascinating—when you invite a character into your imagination, you can succeed in opening up interesting questions within yourself as well. However, having to go home and make sure the kids get fed or talk to your parents about a broken heat pump brings people back sufficiently from the other side of those blurred lines. But sometimes after a shoot, you can even find yourself missing the version of yourself that was intertwined with the character.

What do you do with rejection—do you bury it, dissect it, write it down, or pretend it didn’t happen?

Haha, all of those! Experience is merciful in that you learn to deal with disappointments on at least some level. The first rejections felt like everything was ending. The world was ending, my career was ending, happiness was no longer a possibility. After hundreds of rejections, you know that the feeling of disappointment isn’t endless—it’s like a dark cloud that the wind will eventually blow away. I also got some advice when I was younger that helped. You shouldn’t try to be too brave in the moment of disappointment—it’s okay to cry, curse, damn the world, but it’s good to set a time limit for it. „I’m going to sob and wail for two days, and the day after tomorrow at 10 PM I’ll focus on something else.“ Letting the emotion out is important. I have a couple of close friends I always call when something disappointing happens. Often during these calls, the crying turns to laughter, at least for a moment. Laughing at your own misery does you good.

What kind of set makes you feel most alive—where everything’s raw and falling apart, or tightly choreographed and untouchable?

Either option can be really inspiring—what’s most important to me is that everyone on set wants to be there. That the work and the way of doing it ignites everyone’s passion. In an ideal world, phones would be banned from sets. Mine included. I believe that being forced to encounter each other, to endure boring moments and awkward moments, increases our collective energy. Phones are an annoyingly easy escape route. Also, if you’re doing a scene and you can see out of the corner of your eye that people are scrolling their phones, it somehow destroys the magic of the moment.

If you could spend an afternoon shadowing any actor on set—not to work, just to observe—who would it be and why?

I would love to shadow Sandra Hüller. She’s an incredible actress who has a rawness and presence that absolutely floors me. There’s something truly captivating and indefinable about her. I’d be fascinated to know where that intensity comes from. I know she also does a lot of theater work. My dream is to see her on stage sometime, and it would be really fascinating to peek behind the scenes as well.

Among directors, I would have loved to get a glimpse of how Nora Fingscheidt directed the film System Crasher. Then nine-year-old Helena Zengel delivers an absolutely incredible performance in that movie. I’d want to know how the direction of a child actor happened on such an unbelievable scale. All of the acting in that film is brilliant.

What role has surprised you the most—not because of how it looked on screen, but how it affected you internally?

I did a film called Purge 15 years ago. It’s based on a powerful novel by a Finnish author called Sofi Oksanen. I played a character of a young woman named Aliide Truu, who lives under the horrors of Stalin’s regime in Estonia. The tragic events of the Estonian state destroy Aliide’s family and drive Aliide to extreme acts—she betrays her own family and uses extreme cruelty against those close to her. I had acted in many roles of nice and proper girls before that. Stepping into Aliide’s skin was a brutal and deeply affecting experience for me. It felt like as an artist I was examining my own dark sides with a different kind of honesty than before. It was easy for me to be on the side of this contradictory character, to feel empathy for the low side of humanity. I’m glad that during my career, I’ve gotten to see this shift, that we have more and more films with conflicted, contradictory roles for women, where it’s possible to explore the challenging emotional landscapes of human experience. Acting is an act of empathy, and I truly believe increasing empathy is something the world needs right now.

Is there a part of your creative life that no one really sees—but that fuels everything else you do?

I am very lucky to have so many incredibly creative and intelligent people around me. Writers, painters, artists from different fields. Without being able to discuss with them and see their art and share my life with them, I never would have gotten this far on my own. Also, I do a lot of sauna. It´s like therapy to me. I go into sauna with my questions and restless mind, and usually at least some answers appear.