Background

Lasse Hallström was born on June 2, 1946, in Stockholm, Sweden. He is the son of a dentist and an amateur filmmaker Nils Hallström and a writer Karin Lyberg. His maternal grandfather, Ernst Lyberg, was the Minister of Finance in the first cabinet of Carl Gustaf Ekman and leader of the Liberal Party of Sweden.

Education

Lasse Hallström attended Adolf Fredrik's Music School in Stockholm.

Career

Lasse Hallström began his professional career when he started making his own 8mm movies together with fellow students. It was a film about some school mates who had formed a band. The film was shown on Swedish television, and after graduating high school, Hallström went on to do more work for television.

By the late 1960s, he was working as a director of short pop clips at Swedish television. His Shall We Dance? was aired in 1969, while The Love Seeker (1972) was Sweden's entry at the Montreux Television Festival. The following year, Hallström's Shall We Go to My or to Your Place or Each Go Home Alone?, a televised film about Swedish youth, was so well received that he was able to make his feature film directorial debut.

In 1974, ABBA wanted to start making promo clips of their songs: what today is known as videos. These could then be sent out to places that were inconvenient to visit for a Swedish group, such as Australia. Lasse Hallström was hired as director of these clips. When the 1975 films for ’I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do’ and ’Mamma Mia’ were shown in Australia, they kick-started a nationwide ABBA fever. Almost every ABBA promo clip up until the group’s demise in 1982 was directed by Lasse Hallström. Compared to modern-day multi-million dollar extravaganzas, the films were made under very primitive and low-budget circumstances. These clips were completed in one single day.

From the mid-1970s onwards Lasse was developing a career as a movie director: the 1977 feature ABBA – The Movie was his second cinema release. His 1985 film My Life As A Dog led to an international breakthrough. He has since become a prominent Hollywood director. His first American film was Once Around. His first notable American success was What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Hallström's follow-up to Gilbert, Something to Talk About (1995), returned him to the realm of romantic comedy. Starring Julia Roberts as a woman bent on getting revenge on her philandering husband, it earned a less enthusiastic reception than Hallström's previous film, but still managed to be fairly successful. For the following four years, the director had stopped producing any film; when he reemerged, it was with an adaptation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules. The following year Hallstrom scored yet another art-house hit with the romantic comedy drama Chocolat, the tale of a small-town candy maker who shakes up her community by staying open on Sundays.

Hallstrom's pace showed no signs of lagging with the release of The Shipping News in 2001, and though the film may have not been as universally adored as his previous few films it nevertheless earned positive critical notice and earned a healthy keep at art-house box-offices. His next film, 2005's An Unfinished Life caused little stir among moviegoers, and two years later his film The Hoax earned Richard Gere some of the strongest reviews of his career. In 2009 he released a popular movie Hachi: A Dog's Tale. His film Salmon Fishing in the Yemen appeared in 2011 and The Hypnotist was released the next year. His 2017 film, A Dog's Purpose, is based on the 2010 novel of the same name.

Achievements

• Lasse Hallström was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for My Life as a Dog. He reached his greatest level of prominence when he was nominated for the Academy Award for best director for the critically acclaimed movie The Cider House Rules and then later directed the well-received film Chocolat, both of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
  
  Hallström's 2011 film Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards in the Comedy or Musical category, including Best Motion Picture, Best Actor for McGregor, and Best Actress for Blunt. The film was nominated for the European Film Awards People's Choice Award. His 2012 film The Hypnotist was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.
  
  The director has worked with Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Robert Duvall, Tobey Maguire, Michael Caine, Judi Dench, Kevin Spacey, Cate Blanchett, Robert Redford, Juliette Binoche, Richard Gere, Dennis Quaid, Jennifer Lopez, Julianne Moore, and Ewan McGregor.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Safe Haven

    (An affirming and suspenseful story about a young woman's ...)

    2013
  • The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

    (In Disney's reimagining of The Nutcracker, a mysterious g...)

    2018
  • ABBA: The Movie

    (ABBA, the international music sensation of the '70s, is c...)

    1977
  • Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

    (An inspirational film where a fisheries expert is enliste...)

    2011
  • The Hundred-Foot Journey

    (The Kadam family leaves India for France where they open ...)

    2014
  • An Unfinished Life

    (Stoic and heartbroken, Einar Gilkyson quietly lives in th...)

    2005
  • A Dog's Purpose

    (A dog looks to discover his purpose in life by showing hu...)

    2017
  • Hachi: A Dog's Tale

    (From Lasse Hallström comes Hachi: A Dog's Tale, a film ba...)

    2009
  • Dear John

    (Dear John is a story of destiny that pushes young soldier...)

    2010
  • My Life as a Dog

    (A twelve-year-old from a working-class family is sent to ...)

    1985
  • The Cider House Rules

    (A compassionate young man, raised in an orphanage and tra...)

    1999
  • The Shipping News

    (An emotionally-beaten man with his young daughter moves t...)

    2001
  • What's Eating Gilbert Grape

    (Gilbert Grape spends his days caring for his mentally cha...)

    1993
  • The Hoax

    (A man sells a bogus biography of Howard Hughes to a premi...)

    2006
  • Something To Talk About

    (A contemporary Southern wife and mother has the "perfect ...)

    1995
  • Casanova

    (The story of the legendary lover and his exploits with wo...)

    2005

Views

Lasse Hallström had a great producer-director experience with Steven Spielberg. He gave wonderful notes on the script and gave him wonderful e-mails commenting on the dailies almost daily. The fact that Steven Spielberg liked what he saw was an inspiration to Hallström. He really wanted to try his best when he had Spielberg as a producer.

Lasse Hallström was grateful that Johnny Depp agreed to feature in Chocolat, despite the fact that it's a part introduced one hour into the movie. They worked together on What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and Hallström thought Depp felt that he owed Hallström to show up again! Lasse Hallström describes Depp as a great actor with great taste and classy choices.

Quotations: "It's true, for some reason I haven't been inspired by any of the bad in human nature."

"I know the way I'm drawn into a movie. When a movie goes for a cheap laugh, I get detached. I'm more interested in observing human behavior the way it appears in real life."

"I encouraged the actors in being real and not going in a broad direction. Whenever there was a choice to go broad or be more downplayed, I always encouraged going for the subtler choice."

"My films do have characters who have trouble escaping the world around them."

"Many of the comedies I had made in Sweden were slightly based on semi-autobiographical experiences, so adapting novels was a very different experience."

"But I notice that there is a lack of darkness in my movies and I don't know where that comes from."

"Cinema has become a global economy, totally international."

"I always need a couple of highlights to really spark the passion for a project."

Membership

Lasse Hallström is a member of Screen Directors Guild, Directors Guild of America and Screenwriters Guild of America.

Personality

Hallström went vegan in 2011 after he saw the film Forks over Knives.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Quirky," "offbeat," "eccentric" - the tags pasted on Lasse Hallström films refer to their pitch‑perfect mix of the grave and the joyful." - Troy Patterson

Interests

• dogs

Connections

Lasse Hallström was married to Malou Hallström in 1974. They have one child. In 1981 they divorced. On March 18, 1994, he was married to Lena Olin. They have one child.

Father:

Nils Hallström

Mother:

Karin Lyberg

Karin Lyberg was born on January 31, 1907, in Falun, Sweden. She died on September 5, 2000, in Stockholm, Sweden.

Daughter:

Tora Hallström

Tora Hallström was born in 1995 in Stockholm; the daughter from the second marriage. She is known for Hachi: A Dog's Tale and Safe Haven.

Son:

Johan Hallstrom

Johan Hallström was born on March 4, 1976, in Stockholm; the son from the first marriage. He is known for his work on Chocolat, Du & jag and Beck.

Wife:

Lena Olin

Lena Olin was born on March 22, 1955, in Stockholm, Sweden. She is known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Enemies, A Love Story, Chocolat, Queen of the Damned, Casanova and The Reader.

ex-wife:

Malou Hallström

Malou Hallström was born on May 11, 1941, in Solna, Sweden as Marlene Christine Malou Dahlberg. She was an actress and editor, known for Sällskapsresan eller Finns det svenskt kaffe på grisfesten (1980), Barna från Blåsjöfjället (1980) and ABBA: The Movie (1977). She died on February 3, 2005, in Stockholm cause of drowning.

stepson:

Auguste Rahmberg

Auguste Rahmberg is the son of actress Lena Olin from her first marriage with actor Örjan Ramberg. He was born on September 7, 1984, in Stockholm, Sweden.

Brother:

Anders Hallström

Anders Hallström was born on February 15, 1939, in Stockholm, Sweden. He is known for Skånska mord - Veberödsmannen (1986), Jakten på Janne (1977) and Broster Broster (1971). He died on February 18, 1987, in Malmö, Sweden.