Ole Henriksen Biopic ‘The Glowing Man’ Announced At Cannes

The life of Ole Henriksen, the skin care expert, celebrity facialist and founder of the eponymous skin care brand, will be given the biopic treatment by Hollywood. Ferrari and Killers of the Flower Moon producer Niels Juul revealed the project yesterday during a panel given at the Cannes Film Festival.

“A good story will never lie. And a good story has to be told by the writer,” Juul said on his decision to get writer and screenwriter James Wyllie on board.

He added: “Not a lot of people are screenwriters, I get 15 scripts sent to me every week, 90% is garbage, because you can write a book, amazing. You can tell a story, amazing. But I have some buyers here that know that every book is not a great movie and every great story is not a great book. I love Ole and I happen to know Ole and his story. It’s a story that Martin Scorsese would do in a minute, if he knew Ole like I do. But I don’t go to Marty, before I have someone of James’ caliber to craft the script.”

Juul’s respect and admiration for Ole is what particularly drove him to lead this project. He said, “This man had done more for gay rights than you can possibly imagine, he will never take credit for it. I said to James, this is the story, I interviewed him for an hour and a half. There’s a story there that you want to watch. I’m just telling you, you wanna watch it.”

Henriksen’s life has been marked by some very dark chapters, he was also extremely bullied and mistreated as a young man. Henriksen said, “The idea of suddenly seeing my life come alive on the screen, because my life has been a Scorsese movie, all the drama. But that’s not what this movie is about, it is a musical, with choreography, that we can all sing along and dance along. It’s about our spirit and the inner glow of life.”

The Glowing Man won’t be a musical per se, as Wyllie then clarified. He said, “It’s not a conventional musical, in the sense that no one is going to break into songs. But what really struck me was Ole’s love for dancing, as a child he did every kind of dances, and also his love for music. So, having that, because you’re always sort of looking for visual keys translating into life within a cinematic language. And of course when you have music and dancing, you have a mood, but you can have all kinds of emotions.”

He added: “Ole has had a tough life and dealt with many obstacles. But he always overcame them, and his answer to it was always so positive. And music gives you that positivity and energy. We were keen to do something that was light-hearted and feel-good. You would walk out the cinema like you spent an hour with Ole, and I guarantee you, Ole will make you feel better.”

As for who we might hear or see in the movie, Ole said, “What I love about music is that it brings memories and it connects the dots in our lives. And that era that I grew up in, there was Diana Ross, she became a client, and David Bowie. The fact that music means so much to us, we can dream with music, we can cry with music.”