Kåre Hedebrant makes Oskar’s loneliness easy to feel without making the boy entirely reassuring. His guarded work in Let the Right One In is reason enough to seek him out, though his limited subsequent career leaves less to judge.
Fi1m perspective
Oskar wants company, but Kåre Hedebrant makes him look wary of what another person might see in him. In Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (2008), he plays the bullied boy with a reserve that makes even his friendship with Lina Leandersson’s Eli feel tentative. We rate the performance highly because it lets Oskar be lonely, angry and faintly unsettling without making a demonstration of any of them. His wish for a friend is easy to understand; the boy himself takes longer to know.
That restraint needs a partner, and Leandersson gives him one. Both children seem to be deciding how much they can safely show, while Alfredson lets the tenderness develop without making the vampire reassuring. We felt relieved when Oskar had Eli for company, because the bullying had made his solitude painful to watch. Hedebrant’s guardedness matters here: affection does not arrive as a sudden change of character, and the withdrawn boy remains recognisable when someone at last takes an interest in him.
The subsequent credits took him into comedy and television, though they leave us less to judge closely. He followed Oskar with Lucas, the lead in the Norwegian romantic comedy Amors Baller (2011), then played Tobias Engman in the Swedish science-fiction series Real Humans (2012). Smaller television and short-film parts followed up to 2015, without a sustained acting career thereafter. Those credits need not be treated as a disappointment; there is no obligation to turn a remarkable early performance into decades of employment.
Let the Right One In does occasionally arrange its violence too neatly, a reservation that does not diminish the work of its young leads. Hedebrant’s slightly creepy remoteness helps the film avoid making Oskar merely a child to be pitied. He gives the boy anger and defiance as well as longing, without losing the vulnerability that makes the friendship matter. Start there, and do not expect a sweet child simply because he needs protecting.
Biography
Kåre Hedebrant is a Swedish actor. He is known for playing Oskar in the 2008 film Let the Right One In and Tobias Engman in the Swedish television series Real Humans (2012–2014).
Born in Stockholm in 1995, Hedebrant attended Adolf Fredrik's Music School. In 2005 he played the title role of Emil in a theatrical production of Emil i Lönneberga. He was cast as Oskar after an open audition involving thousands of children. He later starred as Lucas in the 2011 Norwegian film Amors Baller.
