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Jens Albinus was born on January 3, 1965, in Bogense on the island of Funen, Denmark, the son of a pastor and a teacher. From 1985 to 1989, he trained at the acting school of Aarhus Theatre, where he was subsequently engaged as a member of the ensemble until 1994. This was followed by engagements at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen (until 2002), the Volksbühne in Berlin (2000), and the Basel National Theatre (2003). In 1995, he was awarded the Danish Lauritzen Prize. From 1999 onward, he also began directing occasionally.
Alongside his stage career, Jens Albinus started working in film and television in 1996. He appeared in a leading role in Lars von Trier's "Idiots" (DK 1998) and played smaller parts in "Dancer in the Dark" (DK 2000) and "Nymph()maniac 1" (DK 2013). In addition, he took on leading and supporting roles in numerous other Danish film and television productions.
From 2003 to 2006, Albinus starred as a Danish investigator in the Danish-German crime series "Der Adler" ("The Eagle"), which also made him widely known in Germany. In the years that followed, he appeared regularly in German productions. Matthias Glasner cast him in the lead role of "This Is Love" (2009), portraying a man who sells Vietnamese children to wealthy adoptive parents. In the crime comedy "Sprinter – Haltlos in die Nacht" (2012), he played a family man drawn into a turbulent adventure; in the Leipzig "Tatort" episode "Niedere Instinkte" (2015), he portrayed a psychotic child kidnapper; and in the critically acclaimed police thriller "Auf kurze Distanz" (2016), he appeared as the ambitious superior of an undercover investigator.
On the big screen, Albinus was seen as a classical musician in "Das Vorspiel" ("The Audition," DE/FR 2019) and as the husband of Nina Hoss's character in "Schwesterlein" ("My Little Sister," CH 2020). Alongside Emily Cox and Paula Kober, he took on a leading role as a rapist in the highly praised miniseries "37 Sekunden" ("The Night In Quetion," 2023). He showed a lighter, humorous side in the absurd comedy "Holy Meat" (2025), playing a provincial pastor determined to stage a spectacular Passion play.