Main Figure Behind Armour Robocop 2014

WEST HOLLYWOOD, California. - Veena Sud, the creator of the darkish tv procedural “The Killing,” remembers first listening to about Joel Kinnaman when her casting team told her that a “phenomenal” actor from Sweden had put himself on tape. “The minute I clicked on the link, I knew we discovered Holder,” Ms. Sud mentioned of the rumpled, soulful murder detective Mr. Kinnaman performs on “The Killing.” “He felt like a real man, edgy. And he had amazing tats.”

A part of what Ms. Sud heard about Mr. Kinnaman is true: He was born and raised in Stockholm, and was already a veteran of nine hit Swedish movies. But on the time he made his audition tape, he was in Sweden solely lengthy enough to attend the premiere of certainly one of his films. After that, he’d be returning to his new dwelling in Los Angeles, a place where he was not regarded as one in every of Sweden’s most sought-after stars however as a tall, gangly nobody.

“It was all bad,” Mr. Kinnaman mentioned of the 4 months he spent in Hollywood trying out - and being handed over - for parts that he felt in poor health suited for. “I understood the computer nerd who can also be charming,” stated Mr. Kinnaman, now 34. But then he would think, ”I do know a whole lot of guys who’d be quite a bit better at doing that than me.”

Although “The Killing” proved to be a bumpy journey for Mr. Kinnaman - the present was first adored, then attacked, twice canceled and twice resurrected, most lately by Netflix for viewing in July - his Holder has remained steadfastly beloved, and it seems to have been the perfect calling card. Two years in the past, Mr. Kinnaman started increasing the Hollywood side of his résumé with a small but showy part as a C.I.A. operative who tussles with Ryan Reynolds in “Protected House,” and with coming appearances in the Liam Neeson thriller “Run All Evening,” Terrence Malick’s new drama “Knight of Cups” and a period thriller primarily based on Tom Rob Smith’s finest-selling novel “Baby 44.” But first he makes his main-man debut: On Wednesday, he hits big screens around the nation as Alex Murphy, a human lawman transformed right into a forbidding, part-machine police officer within the Brazilian director José Padilha’s remake of the 1987 sci-fi thriller “RoboCop.”

Set within the yr 2028, Mr. Padilha’s version beefs up the tragic emotional aspects of the story line: the Detroit crime fighter with a loving spouse and son who wakes up from a near-fatal assassination attempt and discovers to his horror that only some elements of him aren’t manufacturing unit made. “It’s a job that’s more about acting than it's about being a movie star,” mentioned Mr. Padilha (“Elite Squad”), who additionally wasn’t excited about having marquee recognition overshadow the concept. “If I cast Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt, it would be Tom Cruise’s ‘RoboCop’ or Brad Pitt’s ‘RoboCop.’ So we have been in search of somebody who wasn’t known.”

On a latest overcast afternoon, not a single head turned when Mr. Kinnaman, dressed in jeans and a gray cashmere sweater, made his loping entrance right into a shiny cafe on the London West Hollywood hotel, ordered an costly single-malt Scotch on ice and started furtively puffing on an digital cigarette. Based on an outdated pal, the Swedish director Daniel Espinosa (“Secure Home”), on the streets of Stockholm the sight of 6-foot-2, cheekbone-rich Mr. Kinnaman would possibly spark a distinct reaction. Twice, Mr. Espinosa said, he has been walking with Mr. Kinnaman when clusters of sobbing followers approached. “That’s how well-known he's,” Mr. Espinosa said. “He’s like a Beatle.”

It was, partly, Mr. Espinosa’s “Easy Cash,” a 2010 thriller wherein Mr. Kinnaman played an insecure working-class scholar who bluffs his means into Swedish high society, that transformed him from a well-regarded young theater actor to the type of fellow who brings female pedestrians to tears. Based on Jens Lapidus’s greatest-promoting novel of the identical name, “Straightforward Cash” grew to become the highest-grossing Swedish movie ever, spawned two sequels (including “Straightforward Money: Onerous to Kill,” opening Friday in the United States) and received him a Guldbagge Award, Sweden’s equivalent of the Oscar. It additionally showcased Mr. Kinnaman’s knack for respiratory life into troubled outlier roles. “Joel, as lovely as he is, at all times has that vibe of not being part of the membership,” Mr. Espinosa said. “If he had that classical American quarterback confidence about him, he wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as an actor.”

It doesn’t take a therapist (although his mother, Bitte, is one) to figure out what units Mr. Kinnaman apart. Half-American, half-Swedish, he grew up in an enormous, noisy bilingual household. “I speak English with my dad and Swedish with my mom; it’s quite schizophrenic,” stated Mr. Kinnaman, whose father was a Vietnam Struggle-period draftee who walked away from his post in Thailand and ended up in Sweden after discovering that it took in army deserters. “I at all times identified myself as non-Swedish. I used to be never discriminated in opposition to, as a result of I appeared Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider’s perspective.”

In high school, he spent a few semesters as a overseas alternate pupil at an ethnically various highschool in Del Valle, Tex., and it wasn’t as straightforward to mix in. “I used to be a Swedish guy who listened to Too Quick,” stated Mr. Kinnaman, who drew from this era when building the character of the hoodie-sporting, urban-identified Holder. “I’m really grateful for that year.”

He was in his early 20s when he was accepted into a four-12 months program at house in the prestigious Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. Simply before he started, he was forged in his first professional position as a thug in a supernatural thriller known as “The Invisible.” “I had eight lines in the whole movie, and 6 of them had been, ‘What are we going to do now?’ ” Mr. Kinnaman recalled with fun, adding that he spent hours and hours trying to find recent methods to ask the identical question.

Postgraduation supplied more challenging roles. The first gig he landed was Raskolnikov in a sprawling stage adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” “There were 26 actors. It lasted three hours and forty five minutes, and I never left the stage,” Mr. Kinnaman said. “It was as high profile as a play can get in Sweden.” Soon, film directors came calling.

“What are we going to do now?” is a far cry from the myriad emotions - dread, humiliation, suicidal ideas - that Mr. Kinnaman affectingly communicates in “RoboCop,” as typically as not with just his brown eyes and expressive mouth due to his being encased in a forty five-pound, head-to-toe futuristic black costume.

“At first it was uncomfortable,” he said. “Nevertheless it became a gateway into understanding the vulnerability that the character felt. That was unexpected: That I’d discover that out by wearing this big chunk of suit.”