On the eve of the much-anticipated release of One More Time, Swedish actress Hedda Stiernstedt takes Vogue Scandinavia through the very best and worst of her '00s high school snapshots
Hedda Stiernstedt’s latest film, One More Time, finds the actress playing a 40-year-old woman trapped in a Groundhog Day-meets-Freaky Friday scenario in which she relives her 18th birthday again and again. Filled with butterfly clips and velour track pants, the film, which lands on Netflix tomorrow, is a charming romp through high school boyfriends and high school dramas. The Swedish actress’s real life high school experience, however, was a little less wholesome. “I was a difficult teenager,” she says. “I snuck out, I got in trouble – all the fun stuff all the f***ing time.”
The most trouble Stiernstedt ever found herself in? It was her very first week at a brand new, rather posh high school, Östra Reals in Östermalm and she went with a friend to get “a new lipstick or a new pair of pantyhose or something”. “We didn’t have the cash,” she says, foreshadowing the outcome. “So I got caught shoplifting during the day. And I was skipping school.” “That’s bad,” I say. She assures me that the story is far from over. “I got driven home from the mall in a cop car and my mom was like, ‘So you’re skipping school the first week and you’re shoplifting?’”
Her mum forbid her from leaving the house again that day, but Stiernstedt “cried and cried and cried” proclaiming that if she was grounded she wouldn’t have “any friends” because it was a brand new school. “She let me out in the evening and I got caught with a fake I.D.,” she says. “So I got driven home in a cop car twice in one day.”
Hedda Stiernstedt plays 40-year-old Amelia reliving her 18th birthday in One More Time. Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
While the Juicy tracksuits, low-rise jeans and going-out-tops Stiernstedt’s character, Amelia, wears in One More Time are certainly era-appropriate, they don’t exactly mirror the actress’s real-life high school wardrobe. “This is how I wanted to dress in middle school, when I was 13,” she says. In choosing the looks, if real life 35-year-old Hedda liked an outfit too much, costume designer Julia Tegström would remove it. “We didn’t want to do Euphoria,” says Stiernstedt. “It’s not supposed to look good.”
When it came to experimenting with (occasionally shoplifted) makeup throughout high school, Stiernstedt and her friends found their “own aesthetic”. “It didn’t look good, but we thought it did,” she says. Growing up pre-Instagram and YouTube tutorials, the only person they had to compare themselves to was “the hottest girl in school”. “It was a very sweet time,” she says.
While Stiernstedt didn’t formally pursue acting in her teens, the interest was there. “I wrote, directed and starred in a musical while in high school,” she says. The subject matter? A riff on Not Another Teen Movie dubbed Not Another Teen Musical. In fact, Stiernstedt says if she could go back and relive one day in her high school life, she would do the musical, which was ultimately performed for her entire high school, all over again. “Sometimes I feel like, ‘Maybe I started too late, because I wasn’t one of those child actors’ – I didn’t have the confidence to just do it and I wasn’t born into it,” she says. “But then when I think about it, I did have it in me. It just took me a little longer to get there.”
Below, in honour of the '00s glory of One More Time, Stiernstedt talks us through her 10 of the most sentimental, outrageous and straight up cringe-worthy shots from her high school albums.
"This is me and my oldest friend Michaela doing some sort of hilarious fashion-shoot? What in the name of what? I think we were 15 years old and some man on the street asked us if we wanted to come down to his basement and take some pictures. And we said yes. No. No. No. Do not ever be as stupid as we were and say yes. Do not accept candy from strangers in vans either."
"I think I’m maybe 17 here? And sweet Jesus. The white eye makeup? Hundreds of layers of mascara? The crinkled hair that is lighter in the roots? Oh baby girl just go home and use a hairbrush."
"This is actually a lovely picture taken by my older sister on my graduation day. And my sisters best friend made me that dress by hand. Very sweet of them both."
"Maybe it was me and not Kim Kardashian who invented the selfie? I’m maybe 12 years old here and I remember taking this photo in celebration of my first tweeze because I was so very pleased with how those eyebrows turned out. HAHAHA gurrrrl you will come to regret this I still have no eyebrows."
"This is from a photobooth, maybe I’m around 16 years old, and it was taken because my first boyfriend asked me for a picture for his wallet! Cute! Hope he got one that wasn’t blurry though."
"Ask. Me. About. Fashion. The hat??? Whyyyyyyy haha."
"This is actually so sweet. It’s me with Caroline and Liselotte Bramstång (who are sisters) in Spain. When money was tight, my dad and their mum, who are both artists, used to arrange trips for old ladies who wanted to learn how to paint acrylic landscapes. To Spain. And we, plus all the other artists kids, spent the whole summer together in our own apartment in that building behind us, just living it up. And! Today you can actually ask Liselotte Bramstång (here seen holding a cool cone) about fashion, because she is my stylist. We’ve gone full circle."
"Let me just laugh out loud about this picture for a sec. What a HILARIOUS pick me moment! When I found this pic, I was like 'Oh did I dress as a smurf, how cool'. No bitch, you dressed as a PLAYBOY BUNNY and now you have to live with it. Send help this is torture."
"I have literally nothing to say except Moulin Rouge was a big thing at this time and I was 14 and please don’t hold this against me. Also funny that my mum actually went 'how sweet my daughter dressed as a prostitute let me grab the camera' haha."
"These photos were taken in Paris where I moved straight after high school. I worked as an au-pair and a barmaid at The Freedom Pub, also known as the dirtiest pub in Paris. I wore a lot of zebra print and borrowed clothes from my British au-pair mum. Me and my friend Olivia couldn’t afford a bed so we shared a mattress on the floor, stole the rest of our furniture, and survived solely on baguette and cooking wine. It was all very romantic, looking back. Pictured here with our fabulous friend Faycal."