MICHAEL NYQVIST

(8 November 1960 - 27 June 2017)

Most UK and USA filmgoers will know the Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist, who has died of lung cancer at the age of 56, from his performance as the journalist Mikael Blomkvist in the three adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s thrillers, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. They were also extended and adapted for the television mini-series Millennium. In TV from 1982 and in films from 1987, Nyqvist’s first love, however, was hockey, but he gave it up following an injury. He then tried ballet school but was not supple enough and, on a trip to the US, became interested in acting and studied at the the Malmö Theatre Academy. In Sweden his main break was in the first TV series of Beck (1997) and his film break in Lukas Moodysson’s Together (2000). The villain Kurt Hendricks in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol increased his international standing, followed by the films John Wick, The Girl King, The Colony, Frank & Lola, A Serious Game and I.T. His last major TV role was as H. F. Verwoerd in Madiba, a mini-series on Nelson Mandela. Three more of Michael Nyqvist’s films are awaiting release. Committed to an orphanage as a baby, from where he was adopted, Nyqvist never new his birth parents until later on in his life. He wrote about his situation in an autobiographical novel, Just After Dreaming.

MICHAEL DARVELL