Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman
Charles Joel Nordström Kinnaman, known professionally as Joel Kinnaman, is a Swedish-American actor. He is best known for playing the lead role in the Swedish film Easy Money, a role that earned him a Guldbagge Award in the "Best Actor" category, and also for his roles as Frank Wagner in the Johan Falk film series and Governor Will Conway in the U.S. version of House of Cards. He starred on AMC's The Killing as detective Stephen Holder and played Alex...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth25 November 1979
CountrySweden
I'm happy that people have watched and appreciated my work. That's why I'm doing it.
In the first test screening of 'RoboCop,' it tested very high. Then they asked the people why they liked it, and the first answer was, 'I liked it because it was political.' And the second answer was because, 'It feels like it deals with current affairs.' And the third answer was, 'Because it feels emotional.'
'The Killing' has a really great combination of qualities: Even though it's very sad and deals with mourning and grief, it's still exciting. It's about real people and it doesn't shy from the painful points of life.
Danish is a different language, even though Danish people understand Swedes, and very few Swedes understand Danish.
I've hurt people unnecessarily when it was about my own insecurities. But you have to make those mistakes to become a better person.
I like L.A., but it's just too many people in the same business everywhere you go. You lose perspective.
We all can relate to people's weaknesses. We might put up a facade that everything is perfect but none of us are. When we see that weakness in somebody else, we understand or give ourselves a little bit of leeway.
The Killing' has a really great combination of qualities: Even though it's very sad and deals with mourning and grief, it's still exciting. It's about real people and it doesn't shy from the painful points of life.
Everybody is trying to make something real, something with a core of substance, and of course, an exciting action movie with a lot of terrific stuff and fantastic visuals and everything, but at the core of it, it's a movie with substance and something that is going to make people think.
It's frustrating when you come over here [Hollywood], especially from a position that I was in, in Sweden, where most people know who you are, but then you come here.
I used to throw up before I went on stage, every time. Even though it's only 200 people in the audience, and a movie like RoboCop is going to be seen by many, many people, I know I'd be much more nervous doing a play than being on set shooting.
It's always the thing when you're shooting out and about with real people and you could get a couple of bogeys like sticking their face in front of the camera, like 'Hey!'
You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.
I think for a lot of people that had seen me do 'Snabba Cash,' after watching 'The Killing,' I think they got a sense that I could do different kinds of characters.