Renate REINSVE

The celebrated Norwegian actress helped put her country's film scene on the map. Now Hollywood has come calling.

- PHOTOGRAPHED BY NATHANIEL GOLDBERG STYLED BY ALEX WHITE

Jacket, dress, CELINE. Tights, CALZEDONIA. Loafers, GIVENCHY BY SARAH BURTON.

“I’VE BEEN ASKED TO LEAVE MOST PLACES, except for acting,” says Renate Reinsve. “That’s the only place that I really belong.” Girl Scouts wasn’t a good fit and working at her family’s hardware store didn’t work out, either, but when she was cast as a fox in a school play, something lit up within her. “I was like, ‘What has this fox eaten today? Where has it been?’ No one taught me how to do that, but that’s what acting is,” she says. From that unlikely debut, she would go on to become a celebrated stage actress in Norway—and now, a Hollywood darling.

Reinsve, bright and spirited, arrives for her interview with wet hair and no makeup, dressed in a short Nike skirt, an oversize shirt, and loafers. She’s on crutches after a surfing accident during a trip to Spain for the San Sebastián International Film Festival. The injury, she says, was exacerbated by her stubborn insistence on moving dozens of boxes between apartments in Oslo, where she lives. She has a hard time not doing what she wants to do. “I just do what I think is fun, which is why I’ve been thrown out of so much,” she says.