- Born
- Though Academy Award®, Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award winning writer and director Susanne Bier's work often plays out against a wide-reaching global backdrop, its focus is intimate, carefully exploring the explosive emotions and complexities of familial bonds. This unique combination is part of the formula that has made her Denmark's leading female filmmaker and a powerhouse worldwide.
Bier's 2010 film In a Better World won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2011, as well as an Italian Golden Globe Award® for Best European Film and Best Director at the European Film Awards. She previously helmed the multi-award-winning After the Wedding (2006), which was also an Academy Award® nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, and was remade as an English-language film in 2019 starring Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, and Billy Crudup.
Bier won an Emmy Award in 2016 for directing the six-part AMC mini-series The Night Manager, based on the 1993 novel of the same name by John le Carré, with stars Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Olivia Colman all winning Golden Globes for their work.
Bier followed this with the 2018 Netflix film Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock, which went on to become the most-watched film in Netflix history. In 2020, she directed the six-part HBO series The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, the network's first original series to grow its audience each week.
Prior to this, Bier co-wrote and directed the romantic comedy The One and Only (1999), which won Best Film at the Danish Robert Awards and was the most watched domestic film in Denmark in 20 years, with one-fifth of the country's population having seen it at the cinema.
In 2002, she directed Open Hearts, shot in accordance with the Dogme '95 filmmaking aesthetic. The film won numerous awards, including the Audience Award at the Robert Festival (Danish Academy Award) and the International Film Critics' Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Bier followed this with Brothers (2004), which won, among others, the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
In 2007, Bier directed the award-winning Things We Lost in the Fire, starring Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro, her first English-language film.
In 2012, Bier made her triumphant return to the genre with the 2013 winner of the European Film Award for Best Comedy, Love Is All You Need, starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm. In 2014, Bier directed A Second Chance, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Most recently, Susanne Bier directed the Showtime limited series The First Lady, starring Viola Davis, Michelle Pfieffer, and Gillian Anderson.
- IMDb mini biography by: Block-Korenbrot PR
- SpousesPhilip Zandén(June 25, 1995 - ?) (divorced, 1 child)Jesper Winge Leisner(? - present)
- ChildrenGabriel BierAlice Esther Bier
- ParentsRudolf Salomon BierHennie Jonas
- Replaced Darren Aronofsky as the director of Serena (2014).
- First, and to date only, female Danish director to have directed two movies nominated for "Best Foreign Language Film" at the Academy Awards.
- Graduated from the Danish School of Film in Copenhagen (1987).
- Studied arts at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and architecture at the Architectural Association in London.
- Has two children, Gabriel (born in 1989) and Alice Esther (born in 1995).
- I use it [hand-held-camera] in order to enable actors to move around freely because I want them to be truthful at all times and that means they should be able to move and not be bound by a fixed camera position. I think if it's used for style it's a mistake. It's there to do something very specific.
- [on the underlying premise of In a Better World (2010) (aka "In a Better World")]: It's about the distance between being savable and not savable. At what point does redemption become impossible? Is there such a point? This is what we wanted to explore in the subtext of the story. I also think it's very interesting to trace the route of an innocent who actually behaves like a terrorist but is really just an angry little boy - an angry little boy who can also be dangerous.
- My first job as a filmmaker is to not make a boring film. I don't see a conflict between art and commerce, but I do see one between boredom and commerce. I think once you start structuring according to theme, things become more educational than emotional, and I don't think that works. I think it really is about addressing the conflict between the characters and addressing the storytelling and psychology. That way, the feelings are the undercurrent of the whole story, which is exciting.
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