Joel Kinnaman

“I'm not a method actor per se, but if I'm playing a character that, at its core of its persona, has experiences I don't have, I try to search out and get firsthand experiences of similar sorts so I have something to fantasize about.”

“The way I live my life or conduct myself when I have a problem is very different from many of the characters I play.”

“I went to high school in Texas for one year, my senior year. My parents wanted me to get out of Stockholm because I was running with the wrong crew. They wanted me to get back to my roots.”

“A big moment for me was when I did a play that was a new adaptation of Dostojevskij's 'Crime and Punishment,' and I played Raskolnikov. It was actually the first thing I did when I got out of acting school.”

“Nobody wants to be depressed - everybody's trying to feel better; when they strive and fail, it's all the more poignant.”

“I think 'The Wire' is my all-time favorite TV show. It's so brilliant, the way it critiques society, and how it handles that everybody who gets power loses their moral code and stops going to the root of the problem and just tries to maintain their own power.”

“I'm a physical actor in that I start with a physical sketch of the character. I find it easier to find inspiration from the outside in. If I find the character's tensions and the way he carries himself or looks, that's going to affect how I talk. So that's how I start to create that person.”

“I don't think being a star has ever been part of the plan. But I always want to do really good work, even when I made career moves with projects that made more sense in sort of a career way than in an artistic way... like I did with 'The Darkest Hour.'”

“The original 'RoboCop' was X-rated, and then they had to cut it down so it became R-rated, and Verhoeven claimed that actually made the movie more violent, because it's what you don't see that actually scares you.”

“When I first came to the States, I thought I had a perfect American accent, and then I was abruptly becoming aware that it wasn't. So I did have to work on it a little bit, but I was hesitant working on it because I thought it was good.”

“I look at characters to see if they have some contrasts to play with; I think that's always what I'm looking for in characters: ones that have a wide range of expression.”

“I was a Swedish guy who listened to Too Short.”

“I don't reflect on sort of the age of the roles that I get. It's usually just what plays into what's believable - 'Am I believable at this age?'”

“My sister was an actress when I was a kid - she still is a successful stage actress in Sweden.”

“I think I've seen the first 'RoboCop' like 15 or 20 times. I'm like a kid that way.”

“I like L.A., but it's just too many people in the same business everywhere you go. You lose perspective.”

“Have you seen these Japanese hospital droids, or humanoids, or whatever they call it? They've perfected the skin, and the skin looks so real. They have these motors between the eyes for when they smile. It's just mind-blowing.”

“We remake 'Hamlet' all the time. That's sort of what we do, humans.”

“In Sweden, I went to an English school, where there was a mishmash of people from all over the world. Some were diplomatic kids with a lot of money, some were ghetto kids who came up from the suburbs, and I grew up in between. There's a community of second generation immigrants, and I became part of that because I had an American father.”

“What I enjoy most with acting is when it's a good scene with one or two other actors, and you feel a strong connection, and you don't know how you're going to respond, and everybody is listening to each other and getting affected by each other, and even though you've rehearsed it many times, it feels like it's happening right now.”