Rolf Åke Mikael Nyqvist was born on 8 November 1960 in
Stockholm, the son of a
Swedish mother and an
Italian father (from
Florence).[1][2] As a young child, he was adopted from an orphanage.[3] At age 17, Nyqvist spent his senior year of high school as an exchange student in
Omaha, Nebraska.[4] There, he took his first acting class and played a small part in the school's production of Death of a Salesman by
Arthur Miller.[3] He returned to Sweden and was accepted at ballet school, but gave it up after one year.[5] An ex-girlfriend suggested he try theatre and, at age 24, was accepted to the
Malmö Theatre Academy.[6]
Career
Nyqvist's first major role was as police officer John Banck in the first set of Beck TV series in 1997.[7] His first big breakthrough came in 2000 with the film Together directed by
Lukas Moodysson.[8] The movie achieved great international success and earned Nyqvist his first
Guldbagge Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of a misguided husband with anger issues.[9] He later played the leading man in the Swedish romantic comedy Grabben i graven bredvid for which he won a Guldbagge Award for Best Actor in Leading Role.[9]
"If the measure of an actor is the impression made on the audience, well, then Michael Nyqvist is the greatest of all time."
—American actor
Greg Poehler paid his last respect to Nyqvist after the Swedish actor died on 27 June 2017.[10]
In 2004, he played the lead role in As It Is in Heaven as Daniel Daréus, a conductor and musician. As It Is in Heaven was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.[11][12] In 2006, he starred in Suddenly[13] where Nyqvist plays Lasse – a man who must come to terms with the sudden loss of his wife and son.[13] In the 2007 film The Black Pimpernel, Nyqvist portrays Swedish ambassador to Chile,
Harald Edelstam, who helped many people flee execution by dictator
Augusto Pinochet during and after the
1973 Chilean coup d'état.[14]
He starred as a terrorist in the 2011 film, Abduction, directed by
John Singleton.[16][17] He was also part of the permanent ensemble at the Swedish
Royal Dramatic Theatre.[18] Nyqvist appeared in the 2011 action thriller Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the fourth film of the series.[19] In the film, Nyqvist portrays a madman code-named 'Cobalt', who wants to instigate a global war between Russia and the United States because he believes a war will restore ecological balance to the planet.[20] In 2014, he appeared in John Wick as a New York Russian mob boss who is forced to protect his son from a legendary hit man played by
Keanu Reeves.[21] In one of Nyqvist's final roles, he starred as Russian captain Sergei Andropov, one of only three survivors of a sabotaged submarine in Hunter Killer. The movie was released posthumously on 26 October 2018. He is interviewed on the DVD and Blu-ray releases; in the section on the production of the movie.
Personal life
Nyqvist described his childhood, and his quest as an adult to find his biological parents, in his autobiographical novel, Just After Dreaming (Swedish title: När barnet lagt sig).[22]
In 1990, he married the Finnish
scenographer Catharina Ehrnrooth.[23] They had two children—Ellen, born in 1991, and Arthur, who was born in 1996.[24]
Death
Nyqvist died of
lung cancer on 27 June 2017 in Stockholm.[25] He was 56.[26]
^Hällsten, Annika (29 June 2017).
"Grabben som tog farväl". Hufvudstadsbladet (in Swedish). p. 24.
Archived from the original on 28 June 2017. Retrieved 29 June 2017.
^"Catarina Nyqvist". Daily Entertainment News (DN). 14 March 2013.
Archived from the original on 23 October 2018. Retrieved 5 October 2013.