Lina Leandersson makes Eli's loneliness painfully convincing in Let the Right One In. We rate the performance highly because her guarded stillness lets us want company for this child without ever making the vampire safe.
Fi1m perspective
In Let the Right One In (2008), Lina Leandersson's Eli seems to be deciding how much of herself it is safe to let another child see. Her body stays still; her watchfulness keeps that stillness from becoming blank. We can recognise the vampire's loneliness without feeling that we know her. It is a performance worth seeking out in a film we strongly recommend, though some of its violence feels too carefully arranged.
Director Tomas Alfredson gives that guardedness room to matter in Eli's friendship with the bullied Oskar, played by Kåre Hedebrant. John Ajvide Lindqvist's adaptation keeps the children's loneliness central, so there is something for the actors to play besides fear. Both make the tentative business of trusting someone convincing. We were relieved when Oskar had Eli for company, because the bullying had made his solitude painful to watch. Leandersson never quite lets that relief settle into confidence that he has found a safe friend.
Eli's voice, however, is not Leandersson's: Elif Ceylan dubbed the part in post-production. The finished character owes something to that collaboration, and we should not credit Leandersson with the vocal choices. What she supplies is the contained body and the watchful caution. She suggests someone much older than her appearance without visibly labouring to seem ancient.
Her subsequent screen work has been sparse, with Zerin in Sofia Norlin's Broken Hill Blues (2013) and Ronja in Kadri Kousaar's The Arbiter (2013). In 2015 she made her stage debut as Hedvig in The Wild Duck at Dramaten, with further work there through 2017. The shift towards theatre is a reason to be careful about describing a settled screen style from one breakthrough performance. Start with Let the Right One In, and give Leandersson and Hedebrant time to make their unlikely companionship matter.
Biography
Lina Leandersson is a Swedish actress. She is best known for playing the lead role of Eli in the 2008 Swedish film Let the Right One In, directed by Tomas Alfredson and based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
Leandersson was born on 27 September 1995 in Falun, Sweden. She took an interest in performing from an early age, appearing in amateur theatre and attending drama courses. She was cast in Let the Right One In after applying through a web-based casting service and auditioning three times. Her other credits include roles in the films The Arbiter (2013) and Ömheten (2013), a television appearance in 15 – Det är mitt liv (2011), and stage work at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.
