A Danish actress abroad: From Copenhagen to Los Angeles

Leaving Denmark

Travel has always had a way of sharpening my attention. Airports, train stations, café windows — places where people pause for a moment before moving on. Even now, working professionally as an actress and illustrator, I often find myself quietly observing these small rhythms of everyday life.

I grew up in Denmark, where summer holidays meant countryside drives, visiting relatives, and the occasional trip across the Swedish border. The world felt close, but still mostly familiar.

Then, at sixteen, everything shifted.

After months of delivering newspapers to save money, I boarded my first international flight — to Northern California — as an exchange student. It was the first time I had traveled that far from home, and the experience shaped me in ways I only understood years later.

It also shaped the way I speak. My American accent slowly became second nature, and eventually part of how I’m cast.

The Orbit Hostel, my first stop in Los Angeles.

Landing in Los Angeles

A few years later, I found myself returning to the United States — this time to Los Angeles.

I had come across the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in a magazine article and decided, almost on impulse, to audition. When the acceptance email arrived, the decision felt both sudden and inevitable.

I still remember stepping out at LAX, the particular brightness of the air, and the strange feeling of having landed somewhere that had existed only in films and imagination.

My first stop was The Orbit Hostel in West Hollywood — a place filled with travelers passing through the city. Some were aspiring actors, like me. Others were musicians, writers, or simply people moving between places.

One long-term guest handed me a folded map of Los Angeles with notes scribbled across it: the best farmers markets, neighbourhoods to avoid, where to find the cheapest groceries. For a while, that map felt like my entire orientation to the city.

A Danish actress - Life Across Borders

Over the years that followed, my work took me across several countries.

There were auditions in Canada, periods of couch-surfing while looking for work, visa applications between projects, and later stretches of time spent in London. Eventually I returned to Copenhagen, where I’m now based again.

Working across borders and languages became part of the rhythm of my career. Some projects happened on film sets, others on stage, and many behind the microphone in voiceover work.

Looking back, that slightly unconventional path shaped the way I approach both acting and illustration.

Every role I play — and every image I draw — is influenced by movement between places, contrasts between cultures, and a habit of quiet observation.

in Los Angeles.

The Quiet Thread

In acting, as in travel, the moments that stay with me are often the quiet ones.

A look exchanged in a doorway.A conversation overheard in a café.A small gesture that reveals more than dialogue ever could.

Those details — pauses, stillness, the spaces between events — continue to shape how I work today.

In many ways, everything began with that first flight across the Atlantic, a folded paper map, and a sixteen-year-old’s quiet plan to see the world.

A little background:

I’m Liv Hansen, a Danish actress and illustrator based in Copenhagen.

I trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in Los Angeles and have worked across Canada, the UK, and Europe — on screen, on stage, and in voiceover.

My work often returns to similar themes: atmosphere, nostalgia, and the small moments that shape our life.