kari

Kari Kleiv has experience in feature films, shorts, TV, music videos, commercials and stage. She was recently seen on the BBC program The Real White Queen and Her Rivals and in the short Drone starring Ewan Bremner. She has acted opposite Kris Kristoffersen in Yohan, and her mentor after graduating from Drama Centre London in 2012 has been Greta Scacchi. 

 

 

 

Kari wanted to become an actress after seeing a play about Florence Nightingale at age 8. She started acting on stage when she was 10 years old in Virginia, USA. Her nanny was an actress and would read her plays like the Merchant of Venice, and play all the characters skilfully and uniquely. "She breathed such life into a text that I would have found too difficult to read on my own at that age. Without a word she taught me there is a difference between reading the story, and being the story, and that is what I aim to do: Live it." She took acting lessons at the Actors Place in Virginia, and continued after moving to Norway at age 12, in a children's theatre school in the sea-side town, Kristiansand. While walking her dog, she was spotted from a car by a director on the show "Midt i Smørøyet", a youth TV program on NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) at 14, and asked to send in her reel. Debuting on TV in a leading part on the show coincided with debuting on stage with her girl-band where she was playing guitar and writing her own music. Norwegian and Japanese short films and TV commercials followed, and she was flown to Shanghai, China, for a Minolta commercial in 2003. That same year, she moved to London, where she was spotted by someone else in a car, Mark Owen, of the band Take That, as she was filming a music video for one of her songs in the street in Holland Park with director Sten Hellevig. He came up to asked her if she actually played guitar, or if it was just a prop for what he thought was perhaps a modelling shoot. She answered she was playing that same night, and he came to the gig, and subsequently offered her a producing contract through his contacts in 10 management.

 

Her single "When Can I See You" was one of the tracks from the producer Owen hired, Leo Abrahams, and the single was the first from a female solo artist released on Fierce Panda Records, where singles from bands who later became successes also had debuted (Coldplay, Keane, Placebo, Death Cab for Cutie, and Ash). She played opposite Kris Kristofferson in a scene in the feature film Yohan, who inspired her to continue songwriting, along with acting.

 

Her music and acting careers went parallel from there, though she deciding on acting as a main focus and started training full time at Drama Centre London for two years. She studied Stanislavski and Meisner, and the Yat Malmgren/Laban movement work unique to Drama Centre, also studied by alumni Paul Bettany, Colin Firth, Micheal Fassbender and Tom Hardy. She received several requests from agents after her graduation show, where she played a housewife in denial of murder, and another role as a delusional criminal investigator, and signed with IAL. "They believed in me, and they didn't want to change me, which is good for someone who other than in person has the professional requirement of changing all the time." She continues to work as an actress and a new music video with her new song "One Day in Oslo" is coming soon.