
Acting
Apr 24, 1981
Helsinki, Finland
Laura Birn
Acting
Biography
Laura Eveliina Birn (born 25 April 1981 in Helsinki) is a Finnish actress. She has tackled roles in historical dramas, lighthearted comedies, and thought-provoking art-house films with equal finesse. Her performance in the 2012 film Purge earned her a Jussi Award for Best Actress and a nomination for a Satellite Award for Best Actress. In 2021 she began playing the role of robot Eto Demerzel in the series Foundation. Birn has also appeared in films Pearls and Pigs (2003), Promise (2005), Christmas Story (2007), Naked Harbour (2012), Heart of a Lion (2013), Walk Among the Tombstones (2014), The Ones Below (2015), Helene (2020), and The Crow (2024). Her performance in the mystery drama series Munkkivuori earned her a Golden Venla award for Best Supporting Actress in 2022. Birn completed her master's degree from Helsinki Theatre Academy in 2008. In 2024, Finnish weekly news magazine Suomen Kuvalehti wrote, sourcing publicly available tax records, that Birn is the most highly-paid Finnish actor or actress of all time.
Feature Films (48)

A documentary film about Martta Koskinen, the last executed woman in Finland during the war in 1943. Martta was a Seamstress who lived in Helsinki during the Second World War. She was one of the post-civil war (in 1918) generation for whom the war had meant a disappointment in the system and failure in unity of the Finnish nation. The legacy of the civil war had left systems of persecution in place for those with socialist ideals. Martta and her fellow revolutionaries were determined to continue the resistance movement although they knew that at worst it could cost their lives. Martta was imprisoned twice before she was shot. She was an idealist, whose seemingly harmless, naive beliefs in peace and justice were the most dangerous traits a person could have at the time.
Seamstress

A love story set in the world of theater. Romeo and Juliet is to be the season's grand premiere. Noora, the female lead in the play, breaks her leg at the kickoff party, and Laura, an actress who due to her debilitating stage fright has ended up as the prompter for the play, gets a chance of a lifetime. There are 8 days to the premiere.
8 Days to Premiere

The film tells about members of Finnish women's Lotta Service during the Second World War through the eyes of three young women.
Promise

A Finnish-Norwegian love story with an unexpected shape and development. Shot in Oslo, Helsinki, Istanbul and Berlin. The film focuses on showing the actual moments that lead to getting to know one another, building a relationship and to breaking up. The film takes part in Kaisa’s attempt of getting involved with two different men that look almost exactly the same, questioning where the thin line is between someone potentially being the love of your life or not. Shooting the film with the approach of a workshop and closely involving the actors allows the film to take shape as a unique, unpredictable cinematic expression touching the basis and complexity of human behavior.
Must Have Been Love

Aliide experienced The Great Terror under Stalin’s regime, and decades after her hometown people were deported to Siberia, she lives alone in an isolated house. One night, she finds a young woman in her yard – Zara has just escaped from the claws of the Russian mafia that held her as a sex slave. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in unearthing each other’s motives and gradually their stories merge into one, revealing the tragedy of a family during the cruelest years in Estonian history.
Purge

The Finnish short film is a tragic tale of a young boy who falls in love with a dangerous older girl.
Little Hearts

Neo-Nazi falls in love with a woman who has a black son and finds himself fighting with conflicting feelings.
Heart of a Lion

The story of a simple and good-natured rocker in his late thirties who has a homemade electric guitar and loving parents.
Rock'n Roll Never Dies

Soulmates Eric and Shelly are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.
The Crow

An comedy set in 1960s Helsinki. The story revolves around Elsa, a resolute hatmaker who is in complete control of her life. Besides running her shop, she sometimes doubles as a fortune teller. When Jan, a Czechoslovakian jazz musician and Elsa's old lover comes to town to perform at a "peace and friendship festival", her well-organised life is jolted out of balance.
August Fools

Mariia visits her childhood home and reminisces about the summer of 1986, when a girl named Mimi arrived in the small village and filled the life of the then 15-year-old Mariia with light.
Light Light Light

Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife.
A Walk Among the Tombstones
Television & Series (7)

When a teenage couple runs away to be together, the extraordinary gift they possess unleashes powerful forces intent on dividing them forever.
The Innocents

In early 1980s a young child disappears. The lack of police support pushes the concerned parents to take justice into their own hands and launch a desperate manhunt that is seen from the perspective of the local children.
Munkkivuori

Follow a band of exiles on their monumental journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization amid the fall of the Galactic Empire.




