You’re Not American?

An accent, a boom operator, and a moment that stayed with me.

We’d been filming for a couple of hours before we had a chance to break and have a chat. She was the boom operator on set - professional, observant, warm in that quiet way people behind the camera often are. The kind of person who notices everything but doesn’t say much unless it matters.

She leaned in conversation and said, a little puzzled,“Wait. You’re not American?”

“No,” I said. “Danish, actually.”

She looked again. “Danish? You sound completely native. West Coast.”She paused. “You fooled me.”

It wasn’t the first time someone had said that. But it meant something coming from her.She’d worked on The X-Files and other brilliant shows filmed in Vancouver. She was someone who had listened to actors breathe between lines for decades. She knew voices.

Then she added, “You look like Gillian.”I didn’t know what to say, so I just smiled.

She looked me over again.“You’re the same size, too.”I think I laughed.

A quiet moment on set. I was playing the lead role in the training series - working alongside real officers, paramedics, and fire crews.

We were filming in Vancouver, where I was living and working at the time — not a feature film, but a shoot with a different kind of importance behind it.It was a series of training films for the Justice Institute of British Columbia, and I played the female lead. The production was professional, cared for, and full of people doing good work - on both sides of the camera.

One of the real police officers who were on set with, pointed to a patch of pavement when we returned from lunch.“You were sitting right there,” he said, referring to the exact spot where we’d just shot a scene.

His observational skills made me smile. We ended up having some great conversations over the course of the shoot.

Taken during a break in filming at the Justice Institute of British Columbia, where we were shooting a series of training films. I still remember how proud I felt standing in front of this wall.

I have so much respect for the people working in those fields - police, paramedics, fire services. Being around them, even in a filmed version of reality, reminded me what a privilege it is to step into someone else’s experience. Even briefly.

And like most work that stays with you, it wasn’t about the scale of the project. It was about being within something you’d quietly worked to become.

And talking to Brooke - the boom op - felt like a small confirmation that something had landed. That the voice I had trained, the identity I had worn lightly, had passed as second nature.

Danish actress. American accent. British character. Canadian location. A strange math. But it worked.

Casting often lives in those in-between places. And I’ve learned to live there too - in the pause before the line, in the movement before the choice. Not needing to explain. Just occupying the space.

Sometimes, that’s all it takes to be understood.

📌 More recent work and roles here: www.livhansen.net/recent-work