Biography
Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen tackled complex lead and supporting roles to great critical acclaim in such films as "The Celebration"(1998), "The Inheritance" (2003) and "The Commune" (2016). Born December 6, 1963 in Odense, Denmark, he honed his craft at the Danish National School of Theatre and Contemporary Dance, from which he graduated in 1993, and became a regular presence in Danish theater. His feature film debut, in Ole Bornedal's thriller "Nightwatch" (1994), came shortly after graduation, with his first breakout role, as a bank robber who discovers that he has a teenaged daughter in Thomas Vinterberg's "The Biggest Heroes" (1996), arriving two years later. Thomsen rose to international acclaim in 1998 with Vinterberg's dark family drama "The Celebration," which served as the opening volley of the Dogme 95 cinema movement. The attention afforded to the film, and to his Best Actor nomination at the European Film Academy Awards, led to not only more acclaimed work in his native country - most notably the Oscar-winning Danish short "Election Night" (1998) - but also work outside its borders, beginning in 1999 with the James Bond thriller "The World is Not Enough." From there, he played a wide variety of character roles in English-language features: a 19th Norwegian immigrant accused of murder in Kathryn Bigelow's "The Weight of Water" (2002), a Nazi officer in "Max" (2002), German scientist Gerhard Zucker in "The Rocket Post" (2004), a reporter in Chen Kaige's English-language drama "Killing Me Softly" (2002) and a Templar in Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" (2005). But he also remained a top star in his native country earning a Bodil - Denmark's top acting award - for "Arven" ("The Inheritance"), a drama about a man forced to take over his family's failed business, and netted two more Bodil nominations for "Brodre" ("Brothers," 2004) for his performance as a security officer forced to commit atrocities while under capture in Afghanistan, and "Den du Frygter" ("Fear Me Not," 2008), playing a man who undergoes severe personality changes while taking an experimental medicine. The following years found him working more in English-language titles than European features, but the majority of these - Tom Twyker's "The International" (2009) and "Duplicity" (2009), both with Clive Owen, the period thrillers "Centurion" (2010) and "Season of the Witch" (2011), and the horror-science fiction hybrid "The Thing" (2011) - were largely unremarkable. He found more substantive work in European efforts like "The Notebook" (2013) for Hungarian director Janos Szasz, and netted back to back Bodil nominations for "Summer of '92" (2015) about the Danish soccer team's greatest season, and "The Commune" (2016), which reunited him with Vinterberg. During this period, he also enjoyed his widest exposure to American audiences as a former Amish-turned-crime-lord on the Cinemax series "Banshee" (2013-2016) and an international criminal with a secret on "The Blacklist" (NBC, 2013- ). In 2016, Thomsen made his directorial debut with the noirish thriller "In Embryo," shortly before reuniting with Bornedal for the comic crime film "Small Town Killers" (2017) and a supporting role on the science fiction series "Counterpart" (Starz, 2018- ).
