Joel Kinnaman Quotations

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

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.

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.

We are all a unique person with everyone we meet.

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.

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

My father is American and deserted the Vietnam War.

In philosophy, they talk a lot about humans being actual organic machines, and the idea of free will is something that we've made up. We actually don't have free will. We're acting according to our programming as organic mechanisms.

It's hard to act with just your jaw.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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 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.

I think that in Sweden and a lot of European countries, there's this whole mythology of the wounded artist: that you can't really do any great art unless you're suffering.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

My impression was, 'This Hollywood thing doesn't seem too hard.'

Moving in is almost a bigger step than getting married.

I feel like I've got the best job in the world. I just feel so fortunate to get paid to be a kid and play with my friends. So if it's rough or a little bit hot, you just have to deal with that.

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

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

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.

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

H&M makes it easy for a guy to look great every single day and create a personal style. Their men's collection always gives me a choice of how I want to dress, whether it be sharp in a suit and polo-neck, or more relaxed in jeans and a tweed jacket.

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

My parents got married when I was 12.

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 was a Swedish guy who listened to Too Short.

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

I was on a Swedish soap opera when I was 10.

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.

When I first heard 'Robocop' was going to be remade. I said, 'Yeah, that's interesting. I'll probably watch that at some point, but I'm not interested at all to be in it.'

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

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.

What we did wrong on 'RoboCop,' we just did something new and didn't really take into account what the fans really loved about the original.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I've learned to steer away from the wrong kind of woman for me.

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

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.

In most scripts, one or two characters have a lot of colors.

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

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

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

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

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

I miss Swedish meatballs, but you can get them pretty much anywhere.

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

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.'

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.

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.

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 'Starship Troopers.' I've seen it ten times.

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?'

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

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.

It's so scary to go on stage. I used to throw up before I went on stage, every time.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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

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

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.

You have to think before speaking. That's a quality I'm continuously evolving. For some reason, it seems like I'm bumping my head into the wall a little bit too many times.

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

You're always trying to look for material that is as challenging as possible, so that's why I like stuff where the characters go through the most difficult times they've ever had in their life. It makes me push myself further and learn more about myself.

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.

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.

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 think the way we look upon gender is that we're realizing that we're not that different, which is a good thing. The United States needs to come further with that. In the Scandinavian countries, we've come further when it comes to gender politics and how we look upon gender and how women are treated in general.

You're not able to do a lot of projects because you don't have a name. I wanted to get my movies to come over that hedge, so that I could do the movies that I wanted to do.

I was meeting a lot of directors and reading scripts, and I was like, "Well, I'd love to play this part," but I couldn't.

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

There are a lot of wrong reasons to do a remake, but there are some good ones. I think it's human nature, in many ways, to retell our favorite stories. We do it in the theater, all the time. I've seen four different Hamlets, and every one has given me something different.

I сan't imagine how ROBOCOP could be PG-13.

It's frustrating when you come over here [Hollywood], especially from a position that I was in, in Sweden, where most people know who you are, but then you come here.

With RoboCop, I couldn't be happier because it's such a quality director.José Padilha is a young master.

I love Starship Troopers. That's really smart. I think he really could portray fascism in a comedic way. It's funny because both José [Padilha] and [Paul] Verhoeven were accused of being fascists for their movies because they had fascist leads. So, it's not going to have his tone, but there's going to be political satire in it.

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.

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