Nationality Swedish Name Joel Kinnaman Alma mater Malmo Theatre Academy Role Actor | Occupation Actor Height 1.89 m Years active 1990–present | |
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Full Name Charles Joel Nordstrom Siblings Melinda Kinnaman, Leyla Belle Drake Parents Bitte Kinnaman, Steve Kinnaman Movies and TV shows Similar People Mireille Enos, Melinda Kinnaman, Jose Padilha, Jai Courtney, Ed Harris Profiles | ||
Joel kinnaman not afraid to be vulnerable
Charles Joel Nordström Kinnaman (born 25 November 1979) is a Swedish American actor, best known in Sweden 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 as detective Stephen Holder on AMC's The Killing, and played Alex Murphy in the 2014 RoboCop remake, and Rick Flag in the film adaptation of Suicide Squad (2016), based on the DC Comics anti-hero team of the same name.
Contents
- Joel kinnaman not afraid to be vulnerable
- Joel kinnaman
- Early life
- Career
- Personal life
- Filmography
- References
Joel kinnaman
Early life
Kinnaman was born and raised in Stockholm. His mother, Bitte, a therapist, is a Swedish citizen. His father, Steve Kinnaman (originally David Kinnaman), is an American who was drafted during the Vietnam War and deserted the military from his base in Bangkok. Kinnaman has both Swedish and American citizenship, because of his father's American nationality. Kinnaman's father, whose family was from the American Midwest, is of English, German, Irish, and Scottish descent, while Kinnaman's mother is Ukrainian Jewish descent. He has five sisters, one of whom is actress Melinda Kinnaman (his half-sister). During his childhood, Kinnaman learned two languages as he "spoke English with my dad and Swedish with my mom." Kinnaman spent a year in Texas as a high school exchange student.
Career
He originally started his career as a child actor in 1990, in the soap opera Storstad. His older sister was dating one of the show's directors, and he asked Joel to try out for a role. After portraying Felix Lundström in 22 episodes, he stepped away from acting.
Kinnaman restarted his acting career in 2002, taking part in a thriller called The Invisible and enrolling in the Swedish Academic School of Drama in Malmö, where actors such as Michael Nyqvist have studied. He graduated in 2007, and afterwards attracted the attention of Swedish media in a stage adaptation of Crime and Punishment. Kinnaman then went on to star in nine Swedish movies in 14 months. He made his breakthrough in the 2009 film I skuggan av värmen and his success continued with a role in six films of the Johan Falk film series. He was then cast in the film Easy Money (released January 2010), which brought him attention in Sweden and the rest of the world. Looking to expand his acting career, Kinnaman hired an agent in the United States, the same agent that represents Johnny Depp. It was announced in the spring of 2010 that he would be making his international film debut in the thriller The Darkest Hour, which began filming in Moscow in June 2010 and was released in December 2011. Beginning in April 2011, Kinnaman had a starring role as Detective Stephen Holder in the AMC television series The Killing.
Kinnaman was one of the contenders for the lead roles in Thor (2011) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). He told the newspaper Östran that he "was really close to getting the lead role in Mad Max 4. It was between me and two others, and the one who got the role was Tom Hardy. [The director] was very pleased [with my performance] – but they needed someone who seemed older." Regarding Thor, he has stated that "they wanted someone with a Scandinavian touch. There were only five candidates left in the end, but unfortunately I couldn't fly over [to the United States] and do test shoots with Natalie Portman, because it would interfere with the filming of Easy Money." Although Kinnaman has said that he is eager to work and become recognized in America, he added that "I absolutely don't feel that I have to take any role that I can get just because it is the United States. I'm looking for something interesting, I'm still young in my artistry, and I must dare to do things even when there's a risk for failure".
Kinnaman reunited with Easy Money director Daniel Espinosa in his Hollywood debut, 2012's Safe House. On 3 March 2012, it was confirmed that Kinnaman would play the lead role of Alex James Murphy/Robocop in the 2014 remake of 1987's RoboCop. The film was released in February 2014. In 2015, he appeared in the drama Knight of Cups and starred in the thrillers Run All Night and Child 44. Kinnaman next played Rick Flag Jr. in the Warner Bros. and DC Comics adaptation of Suicide Squad (2016), directed by David Ayer.
In 2016, Kinnaman also starred in the independent drama-thriller film Edge of Winter. He plays Elliot Baker, a father of two who takes his children on a shooting trip that goes horribly wrong. The film was released on demand on 27 July, and in select theatres on 12 August. Joel has also been cast as the main protagonist in Netflix's Altered Carbon, an adaption to Richard K. Morgan's hardboiled cyberpunk science fiction novel of the same name. Netflix has ordered a 10-episode season one. Kinnaman will portray Takeshi Kovacs, a native of the planet Harlan's World. Kovacs is of Japanese and Eastern-European descent, and was a teenage gang member before enlisting in the military. After leaving the Envoy Corps, an elite military force, Kovacs returned to criminal life and became a mercenary, and was eventually imprisoned, his cortical "stack" stored without a body for decades at a time as punishment before being paroled or hired out to work high-risk situations.
Personal life
In mid-2014, Kinnaman began dating Swedish tattoo artist Cleo Wattenström. In April 2016, Kinnaman revealed he and Wattenström are married.