Stellan Skarsgård - Details

Swedish-born Stellan Skarsgård has come to the fore with recent roles in the Academy Award-winning Good Will Hunting, Steven Spielberg's Amistad and John Frankenheimer's acclaimed thriller Ronin. He first earned global praise for his performance in Lars Von Trier's intense psychological drama Breaking the Waves, which won the Grand Prix at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. He went on to star in two more acclaimed European films: Erik Skjolbaer's Insomnia and Udayan Passad's My Son The Fanatic. His other Hollywood credits include Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, John McTieman's The Hunt for Red October and Carroll Ballard's Wind.

Skarsgåd made his breakthrough with the Swedish film The Simple-Minded Murderer, for which he won the Best Actor Silver Bear at the 1982 Berlin Film Festival. He also won awards and acclaim in Carl Gustaf Nykvist's Women on the Roof and Kjell Grede's Hip Hop Hurrah/and Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg. In 1992, he starred in Sven Nykvist's The Ox, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Other Scandinavian film credits include his portrayal of Swedish superagent Carl Hamilton in a pair of films: Codename Cod Rouge and The Democratic Terrorist. He also appeared in The Slingshot, Zero Degrees Kelvin and Harry and Sonja.

Skarsgård began acting when he was still an infant in his native Sweden and became a household name in that country after starring in the popular television series "Bombi Bitt." He joined the Royal Dramatic Theater Company in Stockholm in 1972, working with Scandinavia's freest directors, including Ingmar Bergman, Per Verner-Carlsson and Alf Sjoberg.