The characters that Swedish actress Lena Olin has played are often cat-like, vinegary, and demanding--no more so than in her breakout film, Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which she played Daniel Day-Lewis's mistress. Since then she has not quite found the right English-speaking vehicle for her intoxicating blend of talents, though she's made some interesting films. She began her career on the Stockholm stage, at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, under the tutelage of the legendary director Ingmar Bergman. She subsequently appeared in two of his late movies, After the Rehearsal and Fanny & Alexander. Aside from Unbearable Lightness, perhaps her most effective performance to date has been in Paul Mazursky's marvelously eccentric Enemies: A Love Story, in which she played yet another raging mistress. She's also appeared in Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate, Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan, and Sydney Pollack's Havana. Directed by husband Lasse Hallstrom Chocolat, her latest film, has her shucking her flaming sexpot image to play a dowdy, abused French housewife who finds salvation in a chocolate shop.

Amazon.com: What was it like working with your husband?

Lena Olin: Through the years I've heard people rave about him, and I thought, "Gosh, is he that fantastic?" But I've watched him on set and I've always been struck by the fact that he's intact as a person. When I visited the set of The Cider House Rules it was like watching him in the kitchen in the morning. There was no pretension, like, "OK, now I'm directing, honey." He was totally himself with the other actors. Now when I've got the chance to work with him, it was just magic, because there's something about his way of giving the world and the air, and you're totally free and you do it just for fun--any impulse is permitted and fine.

Amazon.com: He seems very calm.

Olin: He is. Yet our roles switched a little bit because he's the captain of the ship, and I have to turn to him, like, "What should we do now?" And I could see that affected our daughter, because at home I'm like, "No, it's going to be meatballs for lunch." But here Lasse was in charge, and I could see that my daughter started looking at him, like, "Wow, you're the man here." When we would have a discussion about something, she would come up to me and say, "You should listen to him."

Amazon.com: How did the two of you meet?

Olin: I grew up in Sweden, and when I was still in drama school he was like the big Swedish director. So I knew of him, and we had met at the bar when I was with somebody else. But I knew that he had his eyes on me a little bit because he kept saying hello when I was shooting another movie. He kept saying hello, and I would say hello to him, and then he said hello again. It's like, hello, he's saying hello so many times. And then when I went back to Sweden, where I still lived then, he called me up and asked me out.

Amazon.com: Did you have any trepidations about this role, because you usually play those sexy ladies?

Olin: Yeah. We had a project that we really wanted to do that fell apart five days before we started shooting. So I was still very upset about that. And then we had to move on, and Lasse was going to do Chocolat And Miramax called and said, "We think Lena should play Josephine." And I read the script and I just loved the character, but I didn't see it as one of the characters I would naturally be cast for. I find myself in that character very much.

Amazon.com: Was it her complexity?

Olin: I feel like it's a struggle to seem normal for everybody every day. I certainly have weird things that I wouldn't want anybody to see. And if you're isolated with a situation like that, the way Josephine is, because she has really no one, she doesn't have her husband, she's very rejected by society, I certainly can relate to that.

Amazon.com: What are you doing next?

Olin: I think I'm going to stay home because Lasse is going to go on with The Shipping News and I've been doing two movies since Chocolat.

Amazon.com: What two movies?

Olin: Ignition, with Bill Pullman, and Queen of the Damned, based on the Anne Rice novel.

Amazon.com: You didn't take that role home with you?

Olin: I brought my (vampire) teeth back. I was packing up, and my makeup artist said, "Why don't you bring your teeth?" Because they're designed and they look real. I was like, "That might be fun." I have them on my dresser with the perfume bottles. It's a good image.

Related Interview: Lasse Hallstrom, Lena's husband)

Amazon.com: Did Lena have to audition?

Lasse Hallstrom: I could imagine her in that part. I felt that it would be no problem. We've been looking for material since we met 10 years ago. It's just extraordinary that we haven't gotten to work together. We've had a couple of projects that fell apart along the way that we were supposed to do. So this is the first one. It was a natural high for me to realize that she was needy of my ideas and I was inspired by hers.

Amazon.com: Isn't there a down side to working with your wife?

Hallstrom: It was a new dimension to our relationship. I thought there was going to be some weird thing, uncomfortable or awkward. It sounds silly, but it was truly inspirational. And so not forced. I thought it was going to be forced or awkward to suddenly talk about performance with her. But it was a natural continuation of our relation.

Amazon.com: Did the two of you take the film home with you?

Hallstrom: Never. It was like a complete switch-off.

Amazon.com: What about for the other actors? Was there any kind of tension for them?

Hallstrom: You sort of have to rely on not favoring, keep a little eye on that.

- Amazon.com