Anna Larssen Bjørner

Anna Vilhelmine Johanne Dorthea Larssen Bjørner née Halberg (1875–1955) was a Danish actress and Pentecostal preacher.

In 1909, at the height of her success and under the influence of Thomas Ball Barratt of the Pentecostal movement, she canceled her contract with the theatre and went on to devote the rest of her life to evangelism.

[1] Anna Halberg gained experience in acting from an early age as her father toured Norway as a travelling theatre director.

[1] After her father's death, in April 1892 she debuted with success at the Dagmar Theatre as Rossette in Alfred de Musset's No Trifling with Love.

Encouraged by her attentive theatre director, Herman Bang, she performed roles as a pleasant young girl such as Kätchen in Heinrich von Kleist's Pigen fra Heilbronn or Mizi in Arthur Schnitzlers' Elskovsleg (Love's Devotee).

In her memoirs, she reported she felt a calling to join the movement herself and after completing performances in the stage play Kameliadamen, she decided to devote her life to preaching.

[1] Her decision caused considerable commotion and it was only after she has spent a lengthy period in a psychiatric hospital that she was finally released from her theatrical contract.