Joel Kinnaman Quotes

It's always the thing when you're shooting out and about with real people and you could get a couple of bogeys like sticking their face in front of the camera, like 'Hey!'

I read a couple of books about neuroscience and the relationship between the mind and the body.

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.

Moving in is almost a bigger step than getting married.

It's technically demanding to shoot in 3-D. It's an extra element. Also, just the size of the cameras. They look like these 'Transformers' monsters; they are incredibly big, many of them.

I hate pork rinds. I couldn't imagine how anybody would ever get the idea of taking skin from a pig and frying it and then trying to sell it to people. And then people actually buy it to eat it. That is the true sign of the decline of the human race.

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've followed Gary Oldman his whole career ... I've watched the movies he's directed, like 'Nil by Mouth' - I've seen that five times!

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

For somebody in my neighborhood to aspire or revere a person from the upper class, that is the most ugly and pathetic behavior you could exhibit.

You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.

You can make an interesting character in a small portion of a movie, for a character that doesn't have that much on the page, if you just find the contradictions. That's something that I try to bring to my performances.

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.

I believe that this life is all we have. I don't believe in anything after this, so I think the choices we make here are so important and the relationships we choose are crucial, especially in that time when we are developing ourselves and we're becoming adults.

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.'

I'm never very good with marks. They're always like, 'You're not on your mark'. I was like, 'Oh, it's that thing you put on the ground? Yeah, I don't pay attention to it.'

An amateur can be great in front of the camera, but you need an education to get on stage where you have full control as an actor.

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.

I always look for good stories and good characters, and if they're placed in a whodunit, then I'm interested.

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?'

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.

I loved 'The Artist.' I thought it was fantastic.

I love watching Samuel L. Jackson do anything, but for me, Gary Oldman is the grandmaster of the game.

We have nobility in Sweden, and it comes from the old British aristocracy.

It's hard to act with just your jaw.

I'm battling with keeping my narcissism at bay as it is, so Twitter was not a good thing for that.

The north of Sweden is very socialist and poor. They feel left out and despise Stockholm in many ways because Stockholm has become new liberals and much more Americanized.

A lot of the friends I had went on to become criminals.

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.

My father is American and deserted the Vietnam War.

When it's a moral grey zone, the audience has to think about what they feel and what they think is right or wrong. You want to affect your audience and make them think.

All of our colleges are free in Sweden, but this acting program is the second most expensive education for the government. It's difficult to get in. There are around 1,500 applicants, and 10-12 applicants are accepted each year. I was accepted, and I studied there for five years.

We don't know why we are here and the context of our role in the universe, and the thought of an infinite universe. It's something the human mind can't really grasp. It's statistically impossible that there's not life on other planets.

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

I usually have pretty good intuition on projects that I work on.

Danish is a different language, even though Danish people understand Swedes, and very few Swedes understand Danish.

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.

Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.

I speak English with my dad and Swedish with my mom; it's quite schizophrenic.

It's very nice to be in a show where your vanity is completely out of the picture.

In terms of whether my mom was influential, I think she instilled a certain way of thinking in me quite early: having a reflective mindset regarding my actions and trying to find the underlying reasons to behavior. I think that's quite helpful when you're trying to understand a character.

I love 'Breaking Bad.' I'd watch Bryan Cranston read the phone book, for days.

As actors, we're like these vagabond artists: we have to be invited to perform, so if you don't have a choice of options, it's very hard to define yourself.

I'm happy that people have watched and appreciated my work. That's why I'm doing it.

We are all a unique person with everyone we meet.

I don't think there have been many alien movies where the actors have actually seen the aliens.

I would like to be able to do as many of my own stunts where I can.

We all can relate to people's weaknesses. We might put up a facade that everything is perfect but none of us are. When we see that weakness in somebody else, we understand or give ourselves a little bit of leeway.

I think I'm a boxer, but then when I get hurt, I'll start scrapping.

I was a Swedish guy who listened to Too Short.

My parents got married when I was 12.

Mid-range to low-budget movies have to have a name in the lead to get financing for it.

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

Everybody is trying to make something real, something with a core of substance, and of course, an exciting action movie with a lot of terrific stuff and fantastic visuals and everything, but at the core of it, it's a movie with substance and something that is going to make people think.

'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.

I miss the Swedish women on the first day of spring cause they all just blossom in the most incredible way.

I always get sort of an image of what the character is gonna look like and then I kind of go with it.

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.

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.

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.

In the first test screening of 'RoboCop,' it tested very high. Then they asked the people why they liked it, and the first answer was, 'I liked it because it was political.' And the second answer was because, 'It feels like it deals with current affairs.' And the third answer was, 'Because it feels emotional.'

I used to throw up before I went on stage, every time. Even though it's only 200 people in the audience, and a movie like RoboCop is going to be seen by many, many people, I know I'd be much more nervous doing a play than being on set shooting.

I have a lot of funny friends, and we joke a lot, but I've never really played comedic parts.

If you think back to the moments when you've gone through the most pain in your life, or the most severe anxiety, your body is very much involved in that. Your body is expressing those emotions. So, when we, as actors, try to access those feelings, the body is a great tool to use.

I think you're always afraid when you go into like a big superhero movie that it's gonna be kinda just action and you're not gonna be able to just really go to the bottom of the characters.