Sofia Helin

Sofia Margareta Götschenhjelm-Helin is a Swedish actress. She was nominated for a Guldbagge Award for her role in Dalecarlians, and stars as Saga Norén in the Danish/Swedish co-produced TV series The Bridge (Danish: Broen; Swedish: Bron).

Early life and education Sofia Margareta Helin was born on 25 April 1972 in Hovsta in Örebro, Närke. Her father was a salesman and her mother a nurse. When she was 10 days old, her grandmother and her six-year-old brother had a car accident; her grandmother survived, but her brother did not . She grew up in Linghem, near Linköping.

Career Helin played the leading role of Chief Inspector Klara in the film At Point Blank (Rånarna) in 2003. In 2004, she took the leading role of Mia in the Swedish comedy drama film Masjävlar, and was nominated for a Guldbagge award. In the UK, the series attracted more than a million viewers per episode, and she was called a role model for women with Asperger syndrome. The fourth and final season of the series aired in 2018.

In 2015, she starred in a Danish science fiction film called Fang Rung. In the same year, she acted in a British/German TV series directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, about divided Berlin in the 1970s, called The Same Sky, in which she spoke in both German and English. The series was shot in Prague.

Helin plays an archaeologist in series 2 of the 2020 Australian TV crime drama Mystery Road.

She plays the lead role in the 2023 Swedish TV crime drama Fallen, again working with the director of The Bridge.

Helin plays Julia Rothman, the head of Scorpia, in the UK's third season of Alex Rider, airing on 5 April 2024 on Amazon Freevee in the UK, Germany, and the US.

Personal life Sofia Helin’s facial scar is the result of a serious bicycle accident that occurred in 1996 when she was 24 years old. According to interviews Helin has given regarding the accident, the incident happened while she was cycling to a film academy. Her bicycle reportedly broke in half while she was riding across a bridge, causing her to fall face-first onto the ground. The accident was severe and resulted in several significant injuries. She suffered a broken jaw, broken front teeth, and a severely torn lip. She also sustained a concussion and several other broken bones. She lost consciousness at the scene and woke up in an ambulance. The recovery process took approximately six months. Only months after the accident, she secured a place at a prestigious acting school and landed her first major TV role.

Helin married Daniel Götschenhjelm around 2003, a priest in the Church of Sweden and former actor, whom she met at drama school. In 2015 she was living in Stockholm. Alex Rider (2024)