Joel is featured in the May 23 issue of Adweek magazine. I have also updated the gallery with additional outtakes from the Backstage photo session from last year that is featured in this article.
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Session 002 - Mr. PorterJoel Kinnaman for Mr. Porter
Mr Joel Kinnaman is hungry. As soon as MR PORTER’s photoshoot has wrapped, the 6ft 2in Swede jaywalks across Main Street in Downtown LA and straight into the first restaurant he sees. “Bäco Mercat? Fine. Table for two, please. And I’ll have the steak medium-rare, the Hamachi crudo, the shrimp and the lentil salad.”
The waitress smiles. “OK, then, that’s plenty for two. You know that everything here is meant to be shared?”
“No, that’s just for me,” says Mr Kinnaman, giving her a blank stare. “I’m really hungry.”
He’s not kidding. Mr Kinnaman is bulking up right now. So much so, that MR PORTER’s stylist had to go up a size on the Ermenegildo Zegna collection he is modelling to mark the brand’s arrival on site.
It’s 5.30pm, and time for his second lunch, just a couple of hours before his first dinner, which will be a pound of meat or fish. “I need to make 215lb by November,” he says. “That’s when we start shooting Altered Carbon. It’s Netflix’s biggest show so far, its answer to Game Of Thrones. I have to be ready. In my opening scene I come out in a loin cloth and fight six people.”
So he’s shaving, presumably, like a serious bodybuilder? “Totally. All about the shaving. And baby oil. I carry a jug with me just in case.”
Altered Carbon is a hard, R-rated sci-fi set 500 years in the future. Bodies are dispensable, our personalities are held in microchips and the rich are crushing the poor. A classic dystopia. “A lot of comparisons with Blade Runner,” he says, “but with lots more sex, violence and dismemberment.”
It also goes to show just how high Mr Kinnaman is flying these days. “I was the first one to be cast,” he says. “Projects are being cast around me now.”
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Session 003 - The LateralsJoel Kinnaman for The Laterals
I read that you grew up in Sweden, but your father was American. Could you tell us what it was it like growing up there and what kind of influence that bicultural exposure had on you?
Growing up in Sweden, I went to an English school where there was a huge mix of kids with different nationalities from all over town. Some of them were wealthy diplomatic kids, and some were from the ghetto suburbs. Going to school in that sort of context around so many different ethnicities and walks of life made me feel that I wasn’t completely Swedish, but that I was more a part of this global, second-generation immigrant community because my father was American.As a kid, who would you say inspired you to begin acting and why?
It was a combination of things. My sister was an actress, so I saw her do her thing and understood that it was a profession that I could take seriously and do for a living. It also helped that she found a lot of success at a young age and got to work with all the great Swedish film directors such as Lasse Hallström, Ingmar Bergman, and Bo Widerberg, so that really sparked my interest. I also had a good friend of mine that was really into acting, so I was surrounded and exposed to the craft from a pretty young age.How did you begin your acting career?
After high school I decided I was going to travel for 7 years to make up my mind about life. So to save up money, I planned to work in construction and do all these odd jobs while traveling, but I only got through 1.5 years of that [Laughs.] and decided to apply to the Swedish National acting school. I didn’t get in right away though. It took a while because in Sweden, you have to prepare monologues to apply, and they only accept about 10 applicants out of 1,500. But as I began preparing these monologues, I was able to viscerally experience the material in a way where I could shape the words and move through the scene as if I was actually there. I had this feeling that I might actually be good at this and became hooked. Needless to say, I got accepted to the program.
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Joel Kinnaman for Carl Edmond
So sorry for falling behind on the updates! Recently, Joel became a brand ambassador for the watches brand, Carl Edmond, and you can see his feature on the home page of their website. I have added some outtakes into the gallery!
“To me ‘Be bold, be you.’ represents a certain way of living that’s aligned with how I try to live my life. In short, I think the timepieces capture and reflect that particular essence. It was definitely something that intrigued me. Along with the design that breathes that same attitude. I’ve always worn watches. I love them. I mean they’re practical for obvious reasons but wearing a watch that looks and feels a certain way makes me reflect over the concept of time and how best to spend it. I think there are watches that say something about you; and watches that you can say something about.”
“Personalities and characters I encounter fascinate me. It’s my way of staying interested in my personal growth and exploring what it means to live life to the fullest, this is something I try to remind myself of. Being involved with a watch-brand like Carl Edmond feels very intuitive. Every time I put on my Carl Edmond it serves as a reminder to be here, alive ‘in the moment’ and available to life.”
Interview: Joel Kinnaman on the Vintage Rolexes He’s Loved and Lost
Joel is featured in the November 15th issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine, wherein he talked about watches and mentioned his upcoming show, Altered Carbon. I have added scans and an outtake into the gallery!
Joel Kinnaman for Men’s Health Magazine
Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman got jacked for the new Netflix show Altered Carbon. But his life nearly went in a drastically different direction.
Joel Kinnaman could’ve been a soldier. The Swedish military wanted him. Kinnaman, 38, grew up back in the days when all men in Sweden had to at least try out, and he was planning to tank on purpose. But, he recalls, “when we got out there, we had all these tests—conditioning tests, strength tests, leadership tests. My competitive spirit kicked in and completely removed any pacifistic tendencies.” He crushed the tests, got assigned to an 18-month tour of the north—way up by the Arctic Circle—and thought to himself: Fuck. What did I just do?
In the end, he wound up skipping the service. He tended bar for a while in Norway (not exactly a career) and then decided to give acting a shot. “I was a wild kid and had a lot of friends who were going in the wrong direction really fast,” Kinnaman says. “I didn’t graduate from high school because I was there only 40 percent of the time. So I didn’t have that many things that were pointing any good direction, and acting was the first thing I felt I might actually be good at.”
Kinnaman landed roles in a couple of small Swedish films, and then one in his homeland’s ultimate crossover entertainment product—The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. After that came Suicide Squad, House of Cards, and now his dystopian Netflix series. “Altered Carbon takes place 300 years in the future,” Kinnaman says. “We now have the technology to download the human consciousness into a chip that is fixed in the back of your neck—and that has led to bodies being interchangeable.” So interchangeable, in fact, that bodies are known simply as “sleeves.”
Kinnaman plays a kind of superwarrior trying to solve a murder (and committing a few himself along the way) in a jacked-up sleeve that’s intimidatingly huge—but not as huge as he’d like, if he had his choice in real life. “I’d take The Rock’s sleeve any day,” he says. “That would be fun—to be the biggest guy in the room.”
Joel Kinnaman for Vanity Fair Italia
Joel is featured in the latest issue of Vanity Fair Italia magazine. Check out scans and outtakes in our gallery!
Volvo V60 Campaign
Joel and his wife, Cleo, appear alongside LGBT couples and twin sister models in the new campaign for Volvo promoting its V60 family-oriented estate car. It’s a series of 10-second vignettes that portray the modern reality of families. You can check out the compiled ads below, as well as one promotional photo of Joel and Cleo in our gallery!
Jun 18
Joel Kinnaman for Carl Edmond’s New Collection
Last year, Joel became as a brand ambassador for Carl Edmond. This year, the watches brand features Joel once again as they unveiled their new collection. There’s not a lot of photos this time, but I have added three high-quality ones in our gallery.
Joel Kinnaman & Mireille Enos for Los Angeles Times
Joel and Mireille recently sat down with Los Angeles Times to discuss Hanna. They talked about a lot of interesting things, including how the dynamic differs from what we were used to with The Killing, their characters, and the best of all, how they got cast! You can read the full article at the Los Angeles Times website, but here’s are some snippets:
“It’s super wonderful to be back working with each other,” Enos says at Amazon’s Culver City headquarters, where she and Kinnaman have come together to discuss the series. Kinnaman smiles and nods in agreement.
Playing adversaries instead of partners marks a dramatic shift for the two actors — one they have excitedly embraced.“It was a little trippy the first day we had shooting because the dynamic could not be more different,” Kinnaman says. “But after a couple of takes, it just flowed. We really work well together, and we pick up on little things each other does. I go this way a little bit, and she goes right there. It’s a little dance. It makes it so easy and fun.”
They both welcome the change in dynamics for “Hanna.”
“If we were playing two pals,” Enos says, “I don’t know if we could have done it.”
“I liked that it was so polar opposite,” Kinnaman adds. “Because we had such a good and long relationship on ‘The Killing,’ it was very important to both of us. ‘The Killing’ is one of those things that kinda stuck with people. There’s a danger of going back to the well.”
Enos was the first to be approached by Farr for the series. “We met at a spa hotel where she was shooting in England,” he says, “and I thought she would be perfect for the re-invention of the character.”
Enos says she was asked who she felt might be a good choice to play Erik. “In my mind, the character was a little older than Joel, so I told them to send me some of their favorite names of people in their mid-40s, ex-military.
“They got back to me and said, ‘Actually we were thinking of talking to Joel and wanted to see how you felt about that. I said, ‘Favorite human! On the planet!’ ”
Looking fondly at Enos, Kinnaman says, “Mireille basically cast me.”
Joel Kinnaman for L’Uomo Vogue
Joel has graced the cover of this month’s issue of L’Uomo Vogue magazine. Check out the beautiful outtakes in our gallery!
On his political views: “I used to have a much clearer idea of where I stood on the political spectrum, but now I’m much more fluid. I’ve become much more of a centrist in many ways. I grew up in Sweden in a very strong state where there’s much more opportunity for people who come from the lower classes to do a class migration, and of course I see the structure of a Swedish society with higher taxes, free education, free healthcare and those things of course play into that but at the same time I look at the entrepreneurial spirit of the US and see real value in that too. In any society where you can look in someone’s mouth and see if they’re rich or poor, the society has failed them.”
On his go-to designers: “For red carpet, I like Dior, Ferragamo, Valentino, Brioni. For more casualwear I like ACNE, APC and Common Projects. I’m involved with a Swedish watch brand called Carl Edmond that I love. Watches are something I’ll splurge on as they feel timeless and are a solid investment piece.”
On his earliest memory of engaging in fashion: “Probably sneakers. I’ve always loved a great pair of sneakers and as boys running around on the playground and comparing your stuff. That was always a big topic of conversation.”
– Just Jared
May 03
Joel Kinnaman for Men’s Journal
Read MoreMEN’S JOURNAL – In person, Kinnaman actually has plenty to say—at least when not demolishing crawfish. He’s an engaging and funny storyteller, though it helps, obviously, that he’s got a good story to tell. There are many paths to stardom, but not many as picaresque as Kinnaman’s.
We begin before his birth, at a wedding in Laos while the Vietnam War slogs on nearby. Steve Kinnaman, Joel’s father, is an American GI stationed in Bangkok. He has snuck away on a three-day pass to witness the marriage of a friend to a woman who is half-Laotian, half-Vietnamese. It is his first contact with the people his government has been fighting, and the love-filled ceremony confirms some of the niggling doubts he has already been starting to feel about the war. When he returns to base, to the news that his unit is about to be deployed, he decides to go in a different direction. Steve burns his passport, hitchhikes north, and lives on the run in Laos for five years, centered at the Blind Eye, a Vientiane bar that plays host to a Casablanca-like cast of hippies, journalists, drug dealers, CIA agents, and other assorted expats.
It would all make an incredible movie, and in fact Kinnaman and his father, now 74, have been discussing making one. “I’ve been toying with the idea of playing my father,” Kinnaman says. “But I’m getting a little too old, so I might just direct. It’s really a young man’s story.” The tale is still emotionally fraught in the family, too. Steve neglected to tell his family back home where he had gone until two years after eventually fleeing to Sweden, which offered asylum to deserters from the war. The wound lingers still—which is another motivation for maybe making a film, Kinnaman says.
“I see it as a sort of reconciliation project, too,” he says. “Even though I don’t live there”—he moved to Los Angeles 10 years ago—“everything I do is to create a base of both economic security for my family and also arenas where they can all come together.”
Each of Kinnaman’s arms is covered with elaborate set-piece tattoos. On the left is a chiaroscuro of women’s faces, flowers, and vines. It is, he explains, a cover-up of an older piece of ink. “I walked into a parlor in the 1990s and literally thought this exact sentence: ‘Obviously I’m getting a tribal tattoo because they are definitely never going out of style,’” he says, wryly.
A similar spirit of jovial self-mockery is evident on his other biceps, where the last line from The Tempest, written in Swedish, has been crossed out and replaced. “It was supposed to say sleep but it said dream,” he shrugs. Beneath the corrected quote is a stylized tableau of Sodermalm, the Stockholm neighborhood where Steve Kinnaman ended up after decamping to Sweden and where the younger Kinnaman was raised. Now one of the city’s most gentrified districts, it was, in those days, a working class neighborhood and bohemian stronghold. Family life there was complicated and colorful. Kinnaman sat in the middle of five sisters from various mothers, often moving around from house to house. “My family’s a mess,” he says. “But it’s a beautiful mess.”
He describes it as a happy childhood, but nevertheless, from an early age, he was attracted to more dangerous company. By 10, he was hanging out with a rough group of friends, robbing people, stealing cars, dealing low-level drugs, and engaging in the ritualized group violence of soccer hooliganism, in which bands of supporters of opposing teams would meet in hand-to hand combat on the streets. “It was an incredible, powerful group dynamic,” he says. “Being in a group and just rushing toward another group.”
Joel Kinnaman for Esquire España
Joel is in one of the covers for next month’s issue of Esquire España. Check out scans and outtakes in our gallery!
Variety Big Ticket Podcast
Joel did an interview with Marc Malkin on Variety’s Big Ticket podcast and talked about For All Mankind, the Suicide Squad sequel, and his long-time friend Robert Pattinson being the new Batman!
Build Series: ‘For All Mankind’
Joel and the cast of For All Mankind visited the Build Series studios to talk about the show, which premieres this Friday on AppleTV+! Check out the interview below, and some photos in our gallery.
Joel Kinnaman for Sharp Magazine
Joel is Sharp magazine’s final cover star of 2020! The Zoom interview delves a little into the characters that Joel has portrayed over the years. Check it out below, and outtakes in our gallery!
When Joel Kinnaman joins our Zoom call, I’m surprised to see a cloudless sky and shimmering ocean. He tells me that he and his best friend have recently decamped to Chicama, a small coastal town in northwestern Peru, for a holiday after wrapping production of the second season of his Apple TV+ show For All Mankind, which airs in January. “I’m in some kind of surfing paradise, and at the same time being consumed by the election and following that, biting my nails off,” he says, flipping the camera to show me the breathtaking view of the world’s longest wave.
This election represents a pivotal moment in American history. The agonizing process of counting votes in the days leading up to Biden’s win let our imaginations run wild about what the future holds. What does the future of democracy in America look like? How will this election shape the course of history? (Much to Kinnaman’s relief, two days after we speak, Joe Biden is voted president-elect and Kamala Harris, the first Black woman vice president–elect.)
These kinds of “what if” projections about the future are at the core of For All Mankind. The show presents an alternate history of the space race in which the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon. Kinnaman stars as Ed Baldwin, one of NASA’s top astronauts, who led the failed lunar mission, demoralizing NASA but inspiring the Americans to catch up, training women and women of colour — marginalized groups excluded from space exploration at the time — in the process. “The actual space race was kind of a depressing story,” says the Swedish–American actor. “It was like, we went to the moon and that was amazing, and then everyone was hoping and felt we were headed to outer space to continue human exploration, but then it just got dismantled.”
Kinnaman was drawn to the show’s intelligent writing and powerful storytelling. Each season jumps ahead in time, depicting the lasting political and cultural impact of life-changing events. “I thought it was just such a smart way of both telling that story, of leading up to that story, and then where we wanted it to go,” he adds. “It’s a way of telling a historic story with complete creative freedom for where it goes.”
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Joel Kinnaman for GQ Hype
This isn’t a drill, we got a new shoot! Joel’s looking so good (as always) on the cover of the latest issue of GQ Hype. The interview was done through a Zoom call and it’s mostly focused on the upcoming The Suicide Squad. Check out the interview below and outtakes in our gallery!
BRITISH GQ – When Joel Kinnaman answers my Zoom call, he’s walking briskly through the streets of Venice Beach with his dog, Zoe, a rescue mutt from Mexico. He’s wearing a blue baseball cap and a T-shirt adorned with a baby picture of his fiancée, model Kelly Gale, the sleeves of which are just about obscuring a tattoo of the word “Skwad” on his bicep, which was administered on the set of the first Suicide Squad movie by Will Smith with Margot Robbie’s tattoo gun. (He does not regret it. “It’s a good story,” he says.)
He’s telling me about the play that saved his career. The sole reason he’s here today, promoting a different, better Suicide Squad movie – an unorthodox, quasi-sequel, quasi-reboot of the 2016 DC Comics film about a group of supervillains manipulated into fighting the good fight – is because of an obscure one-man show called Howie The Rookie by Irish writer Mark O’Rowe.
In his twenties, three years into a degree at Sweden’s most prestigious drama school, he began to experience debilitating stage fright. He would have panic attacks while on stage and vomit or black out before performances. “I thought maybe I don’t have the constitution to do this, maybe I can’t handle this pressure.” He resolved to overcome his problem through a sort of self-made exposure therapy. He would find the most terrifying stage performance for himself and do it over and over again just to prove to himself that he could. Enter, Howie. It was a gruelling, 90-minute piece, in which he would embody 16 different characters. “Everything hinged on this working and there was something in me that just would not let it fail.” He became obsessed with it and performed it over and over again in front of live audiences, slowly chipping away at his anxiety over time. After that, nothing would ever seem quite so daunting. “It became the foundation of a new kind of confidence that I had, or that I built with that.”
In many ways, that baptism of fire prepared him for much greater stresses he would deal with in his career, from playing the emotionally destroyed lead in a four-hour stage adaptation of Crime And Punishment in Gothenburg (his first proper gig out of acting school) to his first role in America in the beloved drama series The Killing and more recently shouldering the hopes of millions of comic book fanboys. Working on massive blockbusters – The Suicide Squad, he tells me, is the most expensive R-rated movie of all time – comes with its own very particular kind of anxiety. When you’re acutely aware that a shoot day costs £220,000, there’s a truly high-stakes need to perform, knowing that if you fudge your line or miss, you’re letting multiples of most people’s average wage slide down the drain. It can get a little tense. “There are so many moving parts and I don’t want to be the one that sucks.”
The Suicide Squad represents somewhat of a second chance for Kinnaman. Twenty sixteen’s Suicide Squad was considered a creative failure by most of those involved in its making. This time around, Guardians Of The Galaxy mastermind James Gunn takes over for original director David Ayer. Kinnaman reprises his role as military man and Suicide Squad leader Rick Flag, alongside fellow returnees Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn) and Viola Davis. Idris Elba and John Cena are subbed in for Will Smith and Jared Leto as co-leads.
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Joel Kinnaman and Margot Robbie for People Magazine
The Suicide Squad is out in theaters and on HBO Max today! Joel and Margot spoke to People Magazine to discuss the movie and their friendship.
The Suicide Squad costars Margot Robbie and Joel Kinnaman have been real-life pals since meeting on 2016’s Suicide Squad. But Sweden-born Kinnaman, 41, says he gained a whole new appreciation for Australian Robbie, 31, while filming their critically-acclaimed R-rated comic book-based movie.
“We had a couple of days when we were shooting these scenes, where we had massive rain towers [raining down on us],” Kinnaman, who plays military tactician Rick Flag in the films, tells PEOPLE. “For some reason these rain towers, [the water] is so cold. It’s so cold! And the rest of us, we get the rain on us, but we also have clothes on. And then we get a warm, cozy coat to put on in between. But because Margot [as Harley Quinn] is in full body paint, she’s just standing there taking it. And then she can’t wrap herself in anything. And you just see her, her whole body is just shivering, her teeth are clattering. And then, as soon as it’s, ‘Action,’ she’s on, and it’s on.
“And then you go back to in between [takes], and she’s shivering and clattering her teeth,” he continues. “She’s a savage. It makes a Swede very proud, someone that enjoys the cold. That’s why she is a little bit of an honorary Swede.”
Robbie jokes that she has a natural affinity for Kinnaman’s home country.
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“I think I always gravitate towards Swedish people. I just love the Swedes, so it didn’t take me long to gravitate towards Joel,” she says, adding that she did welcome a warm towel and shower after long days of filming.
2022 Comic-Con International
This year, Apple TV+ has made its debut at the annual San Diego Comic-Con International. For All Mankind is one of the shows they presented and held a panel with the cast, creators, and executive producers of the show. They also stopped by the #IMDboat at the convention where they did more interviews and posed for portraits. Head over to our gallery for photos of Joel at this year’s Comic-Con!
Joel Kinnaman & Kelly Gale for Vogue Scandinavia
Joel and Kelly have graced the cover of the August/September issue of Vogue Scandinavia! Their cover story highlights the couple’s romantic story. Unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall. And I’m not sure I can get my hands on the magazine issue itself. But anyway, I have updated the gallery with some outtakes and behind-the-scenes photos from the cover shoot. Check out Twitter too for the digital magazine covers! They’re not static images, so I can’t really add them to the gallery.
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