You probably know actress Connie Nielsen from her performances in "The Devil's Advocate," "One Hour Photo," and perhaps most notably, "Gladiator." And that's precisely the reason you might be surprised to learn the actress is not American, but actually Danish. Born and raised in Denmark until the age of 18, the stunningly beautiful Nielsen has made a name for herself with starring roles in several big budget American movies.

But Nielsen returns to her roots in director Susanne Bier's "Brothers," which happens to be the Danish film debut for the actress. A draining emotional roller coaster, "Brothers" typifies the tone and mood of most contemporary Scandinavian cinema, which is high praise considering the number of excellent films and promising filmmakers who have emerged from the region in the past decade. In the movie, Nielsen plays Sarah, a wife and mother of two daughters, who receives news that her husband Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) has been lost in the war in Iraq. Coming to Sarah's aid is Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), Michael's brother and the proverbial black sheep of the family, who develops a special bond with his sister-in-law and her children. But the family receives another shock when they learn that Michael is actually alive and returning to Denmark. The man's attempt to blend back into the world he left behind is fraught with alarming complications.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Connie Nielsen via phone recently to discuss "Brothers." IFC Films released the movie in New York on May 6, and it will open in Los Angeles on May 13 with more cities nationwide to follow.

EI: How did you get involved with this project?

CN: I've been getting scripts from Denmark for a quite a while. I've been wanting to do a movie back home. There's been this renaissance in Danish movies, and I didn't want to miss out being a part of that. I didn't see any scripts I really liked, and then one day this script arrived and I just flipped. It was magnificent writing.

EI: What about the script did you respond to the most?

CN: I think many people were feeling a lot of different feelings about the war. I certainly was and didn't know how to express any of that. Then these wife killings happened in Ft. Bragg when the first tour of duty came back from Afghanistan, and it deeply shook me. I felt they were all victims of war -- both the wives and the soldiers who had killed them. It made me think so much that the war was coming back home. Then I got this script, and I couldn’t believe there was a story about this and a way to express these feelings in a manner that was human.

EI: Did you know Susanne Bier prior to working on this movie?

CN: No, but I knew her work. I had seen "Open Hearts."

EI: How did you enjoy working with her?

CN: I enjoyed it. She's a really spunky, cool woman -- very strong and extremely sensitive at the same time. She has a wonderful presence on the set. Everything remained about the work, and she had this wonderful detached manner that made me feel she had the overview so I could do what I wanted to do. I could try out wild things or not so wild things. I felt that, no matter what, she had the detachment to look at it through a distance, which made me feel safe.

EI: What aspects of your character, Sarah, could you relate to?

CN: First of all, Sarah is a mother and I'm a mother, too. She's also someone who is trying to cope with a difficult situation, and I think a lot of women recognize that -- jobs, the children, the husband, in-laws, there's a lot of things going on. Just trying to cope is an integral part of a woman's life.

EI: When Michael is presumed dead in the war, Sarah and Jannik, who previously had a frigid relationship, bond closely. Is their mutual affection genuine, or are they just looking for anyone to comfort them?

CN: I think it would be hard for anyone to distinguish what it is. All human relationships are built on so many different desires and needs. I think there is an attraction, and I think there is the obvious fact that Jannik is trying to become a better person, and she sees that and is moved by that, as well. I think she's genuinely touched by the fact that he is trying to take over the duties of his brother. He sees the chance to be the guy he wasn't allowed to be before because the big brother was taking up all the good guy space -- only the bad guy space was left. All of the sudden, he has the chance to be the good guy.

EI: Do you think there was anything more Sarah could have done to help Michael transition back to a sense of normalcy when he returned home?

CN: We did have some talks about that. Personally, as myself, I would sense that something so awful is going on in him, and I would have been a lot more proactive in getting him help, but that would probably have triggered the same explosion. That character is not me. She does things differently with a different energy, but it fit the character. What I love about the movie is it's not one that tries to solve everything. These problems are not solvable, in a way.

EI: Since you've been seen almost exclusively in American movies, many people don't realize that you're from Denmark. How do you feel about Scandinavian cinema right now?

CN: It's full of young talent. What's more is there are productions that have had success now. Now they can finance this young talent and their movies, and it's just fantastic to see.

EI: This may sound like a huge generalization, but it seems that Scandinavian filmmakers are able to pull off melodramatic material in a much more believable fashion than American directors. Any idea why that is?

CN: I think there is a bit of acid with the sweet in Danish movies. There is a bit of brutality in the midst of the melodrama and that works as a kind of a wake up call. Every time you think it's going one way, you wind up disappointed or horrified or shocked. I think that's the secret -- you need to go against what people think will happen. All in all, this is a very classical story, but it's the way in which you describe it and the way in which you go through what's going on that needs to always be unexpected. But, obviously, the moment you start out with the idea that it should be unexpected, it's not going to work either. We have a certain warped sense of humor in Scandinavia, and that is what comes across in the choices in a lot of our movies.

EI: You've starred in many high profile films like "Gladiator," "The Devil's Advocate," and "Basic," and also smaller, personal movies such as "Demonlover" and now "Brothers." What is it that attracts you to alternating between big and small projects?

CN: Big films are fun, too. There are a lot of means available to make this big spectacle, and there's a lot of fun in big spectacles. There's something breathtaking when you can do something on an almost epic level, when you can get 3000 extras. I, myself, love seeing a big sprawling drama or comedy. However, I absolutely need to see to, for instance, "Downfall," or any of these great movies that are made with almost no money. You can say that money allows us to do a lot of stuff in studio movies, but the fact that we don't have any money when we're doing independent movies allows us to use our imaginations differently. Both kinds of imagination are cool to be a part of.

EI: When you work on a smaller movie do you receive more creative input to shape your character?

CN: Not necessarily. I have to tell you that Ridley Scott gave us a lot of freedom. He was open to loads of suggestions and asked us to give all of our ideas and comments. That's not necessarily true. I think it's really up to the individual director's personality. I have read that the studio does have opinions about whether you do one thing or another, but I've never experienced that myself.

EI: Were you able to give Susanne a lot of input in this film?

CN: Yes. There were times it surprised me with her being a woman director. At first, in the scene when my husband starts to strangle me, she didn't want me to fight at all, and I thought that was irresponsible and just not right. At no point did we show that this woman was neurotically passive, so for her not to fight for her life would be insane to me. Those were things we sometimes differed on -- it would come natural to me to make her more assertive, but Susanne would want me to go for the softer part.

EI: What are you working on now?

CN: Right now I'm going to shoot "The Situation," which is a Philip Haas movie where I play a journalist in the war in Iraq. I have "The Great Raid" coming out August 12, "Ice Harvest" coming out in, I think, October, which is the Harold Ramis movie -- a really funny black comedy -- with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton.

EI: That's interesting. Now that I think about it, aside from "Rushmore," which you had a very small role in, I've never seen you in a comedy.

CN: No, which is weird because I started out doing comedies in Europe. And then there is "Return to Sender," which I did with Bille August that will also be coming out.

EI: As you know, getting American audiences to see foreign movies, especially ones with subtitles, is a challenge. What's the biggest reason people should go see this movie?

CN: I can say it like this -- when we were doing the Q&A at Sundance, where we got the audience award, one of the audience members got up and said, "Why haven't we made a movie like this here in America?" He wanted to see this movie. He said it was incredibly necessary to see this movie to sort of elaborate a bit on all these emotions people have inside themselves about the war, and to see the war from the point of view of a little family. It could be you or me or anybody. I don't think there was one seat available at Sundance. The audience came in droves to see our movie. I saw it with a film club just a couple of days go -- 300 hundred normal people living in Jersey -- and they were absolutely crazy about it. Audiences are responding everywhere I've been -- in France, Italy, Spain, England, Sundance, everywhere.

EI: Do you find people in different parts of the world responding to different aspects of the film, or is it pretty consistent?

CN: It's pretty consistent, because everybody knows what it is to be a family, and everybody knows what it's like to grapple with something that they're not capable of saying and getting help for. I think there's huge sympathy for just about every character in this movie.

Warren Curry