Joel Kinnaman is a laid back and nice guy. I saw him at Way Out West this summer; girls were watching him, giggling while Joel was standing (he looks like he’s leaning back a bit even when he stands up straight) with a group of friends talking and goofing off. maybe they were talking about about gangster stuff. The police claims that they almost always find a book by Jens Lapidus when they search criminals houses.  

There’s something special about Joel. Sometimes he looks just fine and happy, and sometimes he looks like he could explode any second. Maybe that’s what they call charisma?  When I talk to him he has his guard up, but he tells me that’s he doesn’t really like walking around town by himself anymore. It can get chaotic when Sweden’s own Hollywood star comes walking.

A couple of days later we meet up at his apartment in Södermalm. It’s white with dark wood and a couch big enough to live in. We listen to Pussy, money, weed again and he picks up a Polly (Swedish candy) and some dust off the floor. 

- I’m really sorry about how this place looks. 

He’s wearing a pair of baggy Reebok shorts and a Hoodie. And if he wasn’t wearing a pair of Birken-Stock loafers, this would probably be a typical outfit for Holder in The Killing. It’s soon time for him to get back to Vancouver to shoot the second series of the thriller drama. The Killing has put Joel in a good position in the american market. 

Yet there were some people complaining about your accent in The Killing. 
- Swedes are very sensitive when it comes to that. But I’m my own biggest critic and wanted everything to be perfect. I asked to listen to what I said so I could change anything I didn’t like, but the production didn’t let me. They thought everything was perfect so they didn’t let me listen. I’m irritate about two lines in the first episode and one in the third, they’re not a hundred percent. Other than that, it’s all perfect. 

And that’s not weird at all. Since he had an american dad Joel learnt both English and Swedish at the same time, went to an English speaking kindergarten and spent some time in Texas as a exchange student.

-I don’t know if many knows that I’m Swedish. USA is such a young nation. People say “I’m German” if their grandmothers grandfather is from Germany. If you say you’re from Sweden it could just as well mean your grandfather father spoke Swedish. Everyone’s and immigrant.

Joel grew up in Stockholm with five sisters. His father worked as a computer consult and his mother as a psychotherapist.

Oh, you went to therapy?
- Haha yeah, at my mom’s, every night for 32 years! Na, but we talked about psychological things. Things that could be good to think about while acting. I was a pretty anxious teen, but who isn’t. She was great to have around then. I want to go to therpy sometime, it’s just that I’m really happy right now.

After his first acting job as Lina Englunds little brother in the 80’s series Storstad (Bigtown), Joel didn’t give acting another thought. He became a troublemaker in High School cut class and got into fights. He says he hated it. 

- It was really hard. Either someone was out to get you, or you were out to get someone else and then you had to fight them if they came any where near you. The secondary school at Södra Latin was calmer, but Joel was “too mature to study” and only went part time and graduated without final grades. After that he started to work in a bar as a bartender.

- You get streetsmart pretty fast, but it’s not really a healthy environment.

After that he swept rooftops in Oslo, worked at a beer-factory, got himself a job as a bar manager in the French alps (which was catastrophic) and went to Asia. The inspiration to act he mostly got from his bigger sister Melinda. She was a success in the movie “Mitt liv som hund” (“My life as a dog”) when Joel was five. She is one o his biggest inspirations today. What made him want to act was also his friend Gustaf Skarsgård, who went to acting school when Joel got home from Laos. He decided to apply to the school. 

- I was so happy that I got into the school that I laid flat down in the street. I don’t know why, but I got up just in time to not get hit by a car. 

And instead of getting run over, he became one of Sweden’s hottest actors. Hot, by the way. Joel Kinnaman is single, and this may sound like an understatement, but some girls think he looks just fine.  In the extremely empty Flashback-thread (Swedish forum) about Joel you can read comment like: “Who gives a shit if he looks good, he’s an awesome actor!”.

Do you know what I mean?
- This thing about how I look..It kinda feels like The Emperor’s New Clothes, like now I’m supposed to be hot and it get’s all hyped up. I feel good about myself, and I guess it’s good that people think I look okay if they’re gonna watch a whole movie with me.

But you have to get a couple of unusual proposals?
- Actually no. Some people want to take pictures, and that’s about it.

Ah, a reluctant hunk.
- It’s all about choices. If you get caught up in that, that’s how people will see you. I’ve said no to that. It’s easy to make yourself ugly in movies. Yeah! That’s what I’m gonna do! Make an ugly movie.

You’ve said that you play parts that play parts.
- Everybody plays parts, I think, all the time. It depends on who you’r dealing with and who you meet. You invent yourself every time.

But when do you fell most like your self?
- With my family and close friends, I guess…But I can feel really comfortable at locations too, when I’m doing my job. It’s almost like meditation. You get to some sort of deep within yourself, even if it’s in front of an audience. I think I feel the most present then.

He’s eating knäckebröd (hard bread) with senapssill (mustard herring) and asks me if I want some tea.  He switches the music again. He mostly listens to 90’s Hip Hop, dancehall, and old soul. And he likes to dance. He says he doesn’t get out that much, be when he does, he gets photographed a lot, he says. Later the same day he’s going to Raija in Vasastan (part of Stockholm) to buy some old Indian cabinet. He wants to get out of the “just moved in”-mode he’s been in for the last three years. I have to hold my self from writing what a bachelor pad this look like, but it is. The bachelor switches to another song and say that “this is the song about my life”. Then we listen to Fashawn rap about being a “Samsonite Man”.

- I like it a lot. Just being. But it has it’s price. I have a hard time landing and it feels like I’m always on the run. But then again, I’m starting to make myself feel more like home when I’m away. I live in apartments instead of hotels, put up some posters and buy food to cook.

Do you cook a lot of food?
-Hm, not for myself. Most salad and a piece of steak. But when I’m in a relationship I cook a lot.

Why did you eat five hard boiled eggs before we met last time?
- There was nothing else healthy to eat! Only bread.

On his counter stands a jar of protein powder and he gives me a recipe of a smoothie. He doesn’t know that I’m probably the only person in Sweden who doesn’t get what’s so great about smoothies. We talk about tattoos. On his right arm he has a half-ripped off FTW-tattoo. “It’s for the movie” he says. I guess JW deiced to “fuck the world” while in prison. Above that there’s a real tattoo. A nice Shakespeare quote in Joel’s own hand writing. On the inside of the same arm there’s “Ett liv” (“One Life”) in old school handwriting. On the other arm there’s a cpver up of some old tribal tattoo, all done by Bleckan at Salong Betong.

Before we say goodbye Joel changes his clothes. He even changes his pants two time because the outfit “matched too much” the first time. He chooses a pair out of his thirty pairs of sneakers. 

Where are you living in two years?
- I’m living in New York and doing most of my work in America. But I’ll go home for a couple of months a year. 

And in five years?
- By then I’ve directed my first movie.

You’ve said that you want a lot of kids.
- I do! I got that from my own family. We were a big family with a lot of friends. It makes me happy, it’s what I want. But right now…I want to be a good father. And I need to find me a babymama.

In the hallway there’s two black suitcases. There about to get packed again. When he got home from Vancouver his things, his life, was all packed in to 8 suitcases.Maybe he can leave some of them in New York next time. But after all, home is where you boil your eggs.