Michael Nyqvist, a Swedish actor who starred in the original “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” film series as a hard-driving investigative reporter and who often played villains in Hollywood movies, died June 27. He was 56.
The cause was lung cancer, said Mr. Nyqvist’s representative Jenny Tversky. No other details were released.
Mr. Nyqvist is perhaps best known worldwide for originating the role of Mikael Blomkvist in the Swedish “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2009) opposite Noomi Rapace as an anti-social computer hacker with whom he developed a complex relationship.
It was followed that same year by other films based on the late author Stieg Larsson’s blockbuster series, “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.” (Daniel Craig played the role in the 2011 English-language adaptation of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”)
In Hollywood, Mr. Nyqvist was Tom Cruise’s foe in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” (2011) and the mob boss who terrorizes Keanu Reeves in “John Wick” (2014).
Mr. Nyqvist has a number of films on the slate that are yet to come out, including Terrence Malick’s World War II drama “Radegund” and Thomas Vinterberg’s “Kursk,” about the 2000 K-141 Kursk submarine disaster.
Rolf Ake Mikael Nyqvist was born in Stockholm on Nov. 8, 1960, to an Italian father and Swedish mother. He began life in an orphanage, was eventually adopted and began acting at 17 when he was an exchange student in Omaha. He studied ballet briefly before deciding on a theatrical career.
“Acting worked for me because I hate having my feet in the air,” he told Canada’s Globe and Mail in 2010. “In acting, I find the origin of a character. My feet are on the ground. I’m happy. After a while, I realized this drive to act is because, in real life, I didn’t know who I was.”
After working steadily for years, he attained wider attention for his roles in well-received Swedish films “Together” (2000), as an abusive husband, and the crowd-pleasing “As It Is in Heaven” (2004), as a renowned but burned-out conductor who returns to his home town and is lured into directing the church choir.
Survivors include his wife, set designer Catharina Ehrnrooth, and their children. A complete list of survivors was not immediately known.
In 2010, he wrote a memoir, “Just After Dreaming,” about his journey to find his biographical parents. “I knew my father was Italian,” he told the Globe and Mail. “I’m thinking someone like Marcello Mastroianni. Or Fellini. In real life what you find is that the great character you are looking for is just a nice man, a pharmacist in Florence.”
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