Happy Birthday: Joel Kinnaman

Joel Kinnaman

Born: November 25, 1979 in Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden

I’ve worked with really great female directors in Sweden, too. It’s funny, because “The Killing” has really been a strongly female-driven show. The producers, the show runner, the lead: they’re all women. I have a Jewish mother and five sisters and all my representation but one are women, so my life is run by strong women.

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.