Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I'll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in grays.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

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.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

It's hard to act with just your jaw.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

We're all a big hippie family so I got five sisters and a bunch of different mothers. Not really, but my sisters' mothers are all good friends with my mother. We're a big family, 25 people.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

In Sweden, there's a lot of talk of gender equality. That discussion isn't as prevalent in the U.S. I feel that successful American women are tougher than Swedish women - they create their space.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

I'm a bit like a chameleon with my accent.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

'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.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

I've hurt people unnecessarily when it was about my own insecurities. But you have to make those mistakes to become a better person.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

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.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

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.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

I always identified myself as non-Swedish. I was never discriminated against, because I looked Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider's perspective.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

Sometimes if you start a relationship when you're young, you're not as fully developed as a person. You need a relationship that lets you develop in different ways. You need to bounce off different people.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

I really want to live in New York. That's the city of my dreams.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

My father is American and deserted the Vietnam War.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

We retell our favorite stories. That's what we've done since we were sitting around campfires. It's a part of the human spirit. It doesn't have to be negative to creativity. It can be completely opposite. That's how you can break new ground: by rethinking something that's already been done.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

There's a lot of neuroscience now raising the question, 'Is all the intelligence in the human body in the brain?', and they're finding out that, no, it's not like that. The body has intelligence itself, and we're much more of an organic creature in that way.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

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.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Sweden, which, during my teens, gentrified and is now completely middle class and even upper middle class.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

I'm a pretty light and light-spirited person; I'm not a depressed guy.

Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman

Swedes are a really humble and shy people in many ways, but I think it's pretty much the same as in the U.S. Little girls want to take photographs with me at lunch.