Thure Lindhardt took over the other half of The Bridge when Kim Bodnia left and turned it into a pairing of two damaged people rather than one. He is cast for intensity and moral ambiguity, and Hollywood keeps his parts brief.
Fi1m perspective
In the third series of The Bridge (2015) a Copenhagen detective called Henrik Sabroe is put beside Saga Norén. Henrik has something badly wrong at home, and Lindhardt plays him plainly, with the naturalism that has become his mark in ensembles. Kim Bodnia's detective had been the ordinary man opposite Sofia Helin's extraordinary one. Lindhardt makes the pairing two damaged people instead, and the scenes run at a different temperature.
We found that harder to sit through than the first two series, and in the fourth, when the show tightens to eight episodes and finds its shape again, more affecting than we expected, because Helin and Lindhardt play two people who can see what is wrong with each other and have no idea what to do about it. The third series is the weakest of the four, overcrowded with suspects; that is the writing's fault, not his. Stepping into a series that has lost its lead is a thankless job. He did it without fuss, and he later said the role "just felt like a very comfortable slipper that I could wear without worrying about it too much", which is roughly how it plays.
He had been working for nearly thirty years by then. He made his debut as a child in Pelle the Conqueror (1987), and his Danish breakthrough came with A Place Nearby (2000), playing Brian, a young man with autism. Sean Penn cast him as Mads in Into the Wild (2007), a part small enough to pass unnoticed in a crowded and talented cast, and the following year he had the lead as Flammen, the resistance fighter, opposite Mads Mikkelsen in Flame & Citron (2008). Keep the Lights On (2012), for Ira Sachs, gave him Erik Rothman and a good deal of critical attention. In between there have been Hollywood supporting parts, Angels & Demons and Fast & Furious 6 (2013) among them, and the fair complaint is that they are brief.
The through-line is a kind of man: intense, not quite trustworthy, standing a little outside whatever group he has been put in. Danish cinema keeps giving him the whole of that man and Hollywood keeps giving him a slice. He is at his best when a director lets him be quiet for a long time, and Helin is the partner who has drawn the most out of that. If you know him only as a face in the background of an American thriller, start with the fourth series of The Bridge, then go back to the third and forgive it.
Biography
Thure Lindhardt is a Danish actor. Born in Copenhagen, he grew up in Roskilde and trained at the drama school at Odense Theatre, graduating in 1998.
He made his screen debut at the age of 12 in Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror (1987). His breakthrough in Denmark came in 2000 with the role of an autistic boy in A Place Nearby, opposite Ghita Nørby.
Lindhardt has appeared in Into the Wild (2007) as Mads, Flame & Citron (2008) as Flammen, Angels & Demons (2009) as Chartrand, Byzantium (2013), and series including The Bridge (2011) as Henrik Sabroe and The Last Kingdom (2015) as Guthred.
