Renate Reinsve Nearly Quit Acting, Now She’s One of the Strongest Oscar Contenders of Awards Season

After scoring a BAFTA nomination and winning Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve is rightfully zeroing in on her first Academy Award nomination for Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value.

Reinsve leads the film, which is one of the year’s best, as stage actress Nora, the estranged daughter of acclaimed filmmaker Gustav Borg played by Stellan Skarsgård. When Gustav attempts to reconnect with Nora by offering her the lead role in his new film, she adamantly refuses, so Gustav turns to a Hollywood star instead, Elle Fanning as Rachel Kemp. Now Nora and her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) must navigate their complex family dynamic while their father focuses on what could be his comeback film after a 15-year hiatus.

Yes, Reinsve delivers yet another staggeringly impressive performance that’s bound to pave the way to a significant awards season run, but as Reinsve explained while at the Collider Ladies Night studio, she didn’t always feel so widely embraced. In fact, much of her earlier years involved getting kicked out of places.

Renate Reinsve Got “Kicked Out of A Lot of Places” Before Being Embraced By Film, TV & Theater

“I think they just got a sense that I didn’t belong there.”

When asked about the moment she first realized she had to be an actor, the question that opens every Collider Ladies Night interview, Reinsve began, “Well, I was kicked out of Girl Scouts.” She laughed and went on to note, “I’ve been kicked out of a lot of places.”

Why exactly did the Girl Scouts give Reinsve the boot? She explained:

“I think in Girl Scouts, you have to do things a certain way to survive in nature. I love nature. I’m a nature person. But the first thing we did was build these houses for birds, and I was putting all these windows and doors and stuff, and they were like, ‘This is not the way to do it.’ And I was like, ‘Why? Why?’ And we had a conversation, and I think they just got a sense that I didn’t belong there. But they actually suggested I started theater, with all of the stuff going on in my head. I got there and I just found the biggest joy in playing out stuff that I didn’t understand in my own life, or people I knew, or people I wanted to be. Anything that I could explore that I had been thinking about, I could do physically on stage. So, that was my entrance into it, and it’s still kind of my force of still loving this profession.”

Given getting kicked out of the Girl Scouts yielded positive results and Reinsve mentioned she’s been “kicked out of a lot of places,” we moved on to the good that came from getting kicked out of school next:

“I was also kind of kicked out of my home, my house where I lived. I was kicked out of a lot of places, but it’s been great because all these times that I have been, I’ve been able to really build something for myself … But also, when it’s happened, I haven’t resisted it. Leading up to me being kicked out of school, for instance, I was very, very interested in theater, but since I was living on my own really early, I had to also actually make my living. Really young, you don’t really know how to, so I would show up at school really late, I wouldn’t care about the other subjects [besides] drama, theater. So, my teacher, she said, ‘Is there really any point?’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ And I left, and I thought, ‘I’ll make this work on my own.’ Then I moved to Scotland and got back, and started applying for theater school, and then I got deeper into it.”

Reinsve Nearly Quit Acting Before Scoring Her Breakout Role

Joachim Trier swooped in at just the right time.

While Reinsve never lost her love of the craft, she did hit a point when she needed to shake up the typical stage actor schedule.

“I had been working in the theater for so long, and you don’t really get any vacations because you’re there all the time, and you don’t get any daylight because you’re there all the time, day and night. You maybe have a couple of hours in the evening off, but it’s a lot of work, and you don’t get paid very well, so I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll just do something else to change up the lifestyle of being in a black box my entire life.’”

Reinsve tried to pivot to film, but she couldn’t find a way into that industry in Norway. “It’s a really small community, and at that time, I just didn’t find a way in in a way I wanted to work.” At that point, Reinsve had enough. She locked in her plan to quit. However, the next day, someone swooped in to derail that plan. It was Joachim Trier with an offer to headline The Worst Person in the World.

“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll quit.’ So I kind of made my choice, and then the day after, Joachim called. He had, of course, planned this for a while, but I didn’t know that. So it was just, for me, a really weird coincidence to make that choice, and then the day after, get a call with a dream role. Crazy.”

Reinsve Found an Ideal Collaborator in Joachim Trier

Sentimental Value marks their third film together.

Not only did Trier offer Reinsve a stellar character in The Worst Person in the World’s Julie, and again with Sentimental Value’s Nora, but he also offered her the opportunity to work in a way that she finds creatively fulfilling. Reinsve may have been kicked out of the Girl Scouts for not following the birdhouse building rules, but on a Joachim Trier set, there’s no one right way to build a character. He creates an environment where one can play and explore.

“Working with Joachim now for the third time, I kind of know that the role will evolve through the process. I think the first time with Julie in Worst Person in the World, I stressed a lot about not being ready, and having something to show in the first rehearsals. I thought she was so complex, and I told him, ‘I don’t really know how to do this because she’s so filled with so many contradictions.’ And then he said, ‘Well, go with that.’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, that’s possible!’ He taught me so much about going into something in a more flexible way.”

While Reinsve has grown quite comfortable with this flexibility, she also admitted she goes into every production with nerves. However, she views that as a positive because she channels those fears straight in her characters. “I’m scared every time. I’m really, really scared, and I know that the only way I can use that fear is to accept it.” She continued:

“It’s just about really taking small steps and realizing, also, probably Nora is really scared here, so I’ll just be scared with all the other things that I want to put into the character, and then slowly just start in a way. I found early in my career, if I didn’t use my fear, if I tried to say, ‘It’s fine. It’s okay. I’m not scared,’ then I would actually be really blocked. So, I needed to integrate it. So every role that I do, I just integrate everything that comes up that day.”

Eager to hear more about Reinsve’s journey as well as her experience working with Elle Fanning, Stellan Skarsgård and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas on Sentimental Value? You can catch her full Collider Ladies Night interview in the video at the top of this article.

Sentimental Value is now playing in theaters.

Release Date

November 7, 2025

Runtime

132 Minutes

Director

Joachim Trier

Writers

Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier

Producers

Nathanaël Karmitz, Maria Ekerhovd, Elisha Karmitz, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar

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  Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas

  Agnes