LONDON — Clara Rugaard is talking, but no one is listening. She’s crashing things on the floor to draw attention to herself, and grabbing frantically at friends and family but still, nothing.
In her latest role as Neve Kelly in “The Rising,” a drama with an existential bent that’s airing here now on Sky Max, she’s been murdered, risen from the dead and has returned home to solve the crime — and comfort her family, too.
Neve is Rugaard’s latest surreal character after a star turn as the teenage daughter in “I Am Mother,” alongside Hilary Swank and Rose Byrne. One of her upcoming films is called “Press Play,” about a woman who travels through time to try and save her boyfriend’s life.
“The Rising” was particularly challenging because Rugaard inhabits the film as a spirit who tries desperately to communicate with the living. It recalls the plot of Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones,” where a teenager watches from heaven as her family struggles with her death and her murderer continues to slip the net.
“Normally, as an actor, you’re quite reliant on the energy that you can bounce off of. It’s the people around you who are creating that sort of energy. In this case, I was kind of left to fend for myself,” says the Copenhagen-born actress during an interview from L.A., where she’s been spending a few days.
“There’s a big element of imagination to playing a girl who is dead but still existing and there were lots of conversations with the director to get the tone and the feel, her universe and her story right. Neve’s background became super-important, too. I was trying to figure out what she was like before her death.”
Over the past months, Rugaard’s own star has been rising, with a variety of projects in Europe and the U.S. set for release this year.
Rugaard, who was born to an Irish mother and a Danish father, grew up in Denmark and got her start on the stage there, starring as Jane Banks in “Mary Poppins,” where she sang and acted in Danish.
“We have some genius Danish brains out there who were able to translate everything,” she says with a big smile.
She later moved to London with her family after her father was transferred there for work and she stayed to forge a career.
She has multiple projects set for release, including one alongside Sofie Grabol, star of the blockbuster Scandi noir crime drama “The Killing.”
It’s a TV series called “The Shift,” and it’s about day-to-day life in a maternity ward. The series is directed by Lone Scherfig, with whom Rugaard has been eager to work. “She is one of my all-time favorite directors. It’s a small part, and I get to give birth,” says the actress.
Asked about acting once again in Danish, Rugaard says it was strange.
“You’re always worried about forgetting your own language. I grew up in a bilingual household and Danish was my first language. But I’ve been living in London since I’m 16, so my first thought when I returned was, ‘I really hope I can communicate,’” says the 24-year-old Rugaard, who still leads a Danish life wherever she happens to be living.
She loves wearing Ganni and when she’s in London she buys her rye bread from Ole & Steen, the Danish bakery and café that opened in the British capital a few years ago. And she always has a full loaf of rye on standby in the freezer.
Her other upcoming roles include “Press Play,” in which she time travels thanks to a mixtape she made with her boyfriend. She filmed that one in Hawaii and spent her downtime surfing.
Rugaard is also the star of “Love Gets a Room,” where she’s part of a group of Jewish actors performing a musical comedy in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Her character has the rare chance to flee the ghetto with a friend, but it would mean leaving her family, and her boyfriend, behind.
The film, by the Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés, has already won rave reviews in Spain and Rugaard was nominated in the Best Actress category at the country’s annual CEC Awards.
With the death, war and angst of those roles, it’s no wonder Rugaard is eager to venture into comedy. She also wants to work with Paul Thomas Anderson, and steam ahead as a multilingual and versatile actress.
“I think it’s a brilliant time to be a part of this industry. There’s so much out there, new emerging talent and amazing roles for women,” she says.
“Just look at Neve Kelly in ‘The Rising.’ It’s the reimagined story of the dead girl, and we’ve seen it so many times before. And while she is a victim, she’s not really a victim at all because she’s been given agency. She’s actually the hero of her own story.”
What more could a young actor ask for?