Paprika Steen

Paprika Steen, one of Denmark’s most recognized actors and directors, sat down with Sørine to talk about relationships, friendship, melancholy, and the difficult art of letting yourself be seen. Steen, 61, is candid about a life that has felt “a little deprived of joy” and about carrying a persistent sense of being behind—as if life is a general test she hasn’t quite passed. Yet she also describes a deep, almost stubborn faith in her own path, a faith that carried her through 13 failed auditions to theater school and into a career that remains the central anchor of her existence.

The weight of Christmas and New Year

Steen describes a profound ambivalence toward the big, collective holidays. Christmas and New Year’s Eve, she says, make her “an amazing introvert.” Her dream New Year’s Eve is to be alone in a house in the country, stepping outside to look at the sky when the clock strikes twelve. “The open sky pulls the weather for me, makes me allowed to be here, gives me room to be here,” she says. The small rooms filled with people trigger a kind of claustrophobia. She traces this back to childhood Christmases where she felt like a guest in her own family, not quite seen or at home. One of the few Christmas Eves she remembers fondly involved receiving an Astrid Lindgren book and reading alone in her bed, terrified by the story. The holidays, she explains, are when “everyth