For most of the studio era, an English-language film meant English-language actors playing characters whose accents were softened, swapped, or invented in the make-up chair. That arrangement has been quietly falling apart for a decade. Streaming co-productions, the international box office, and audiences who watch with subtitles by default have all conspired to put a new line item on casting briefs: performers who can move between languages without losing the character.
By Luc Durant
Photo courtesy of Viktoriia Ovcharuk
Carolina Buhck is the kind of actress this shift is built for. Trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York, she works in English, German, Dutch, and Spanish, and her recent slate runs across all of them — a recurring role in a Dutch television series, an American independent feature heading for Amazon Prime, the Off-Broadway production Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, and a lead performance in the David Guetta music video Kill the Vibe.
“I love learning new languages and am lucky enough to speak English, German, Dutch, and Spanish. Connecting my love for acting and languages and being able to work across international markets is the sweet spot for me,” Buhck said of her own work. As a result, she is being seen for roles a single-language American actress would never get to read for.
Range As Craft, Not Biography
The instinct, when a performer speaks several languages, is to file it under biography. Buhck pushes back on that filing. She treats multilingualism as a craft variable — closer to vocal training than to a passport stamp — and pairs it with a working method designed to keep emotional truth steady across language switches.
She has built her professional infrastructure around the same logic. Buhck has secured representation in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, treating each market as part of a single working career rather than three separate ones. The arrangement is deliberate: the languages open the casting rooms, and the representation in each territory makes sure she is actually in them. It is the operational half of a craft argument most performers leave at the audition.
Her process draws heavily on the Chubbuck Technique and its insistence on clear objectives, personal stakes, and the obstacles a character has to push through. She has also worked with the acting coach Chris Holder, who reinforced what she calls grounded, truthful performance. Layered on top of both is a dance and movement background she has carried since long before the conservatory work: she reads characters in posture and rhythm before she reads them in lines.
That combination is significant because multilingual acting extends far beyond translation. Technical command of a language is one thing; sustaining emotional depth, spontaneity, and character truth within it is another. Buhck describes her process this way: “There is a lot of flexibility in how I approach different characters and scripts. I don’t force every role into one methodology, but instead draw from a combination of techniques and personal experiences that feel most natural to the character and circumstances of the project.”
What The New Casting Brief Looks Like
Producers building for two or three markets at once need leads who can hold the same emotional register through different cultural registers. They need actresses who can hold a character together while the language around it changes — and there are fewer of them working than the casting briefs suggest. The economics of streaming reward it; the writers’ rooms have started writing for it.
For Buhck, that reality has translated into the kind of slate that would not have existed for a comparable performer a decade ago. Her upcoming Dutch television role gave her European episodic credit. The Amazon Prime feature gave her an English-language lead in the American market. Five Women Wearing the Same Dress gave her an Off-Broadway producing-and-performing credit through Red Door Productions, the female-led New York company she co-founded. Kill the Vibe by David Guetta gave her the international visibility of a globally distributed music video.
The roles look different on paper. The asset underneath them is the same. The industry is hiring for it, and a small group of working performers — Buhck among them — are making the case for what it can do.