Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Wikipedia)
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau studied at the Danish National School of Performing Arts in Copenhagen in 1993. Coster-Waldau’s breakthrough performance in Denmark was his role in the film Nightwatch (1994). Since then he has appeared in numerous films in his native Scandinavia and Europe in general, including Headhunters (2011) and A Thousand Times Good Night (2013).
In the U.S, his debut film role was in the war film Black Hawk Down (2001), playing Medal of Honor recipient Gary Gordon. He then played Detective John Amsterdam in the short-lived Fox television series New Amsterdam (2008), as well as appearing as Frank Pike in the 2009 Fox television film Virtuality, originally intended as a pilot. He became widely known for his role as Jaime Lannister in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones, for which he received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2018 and 2019. He is a UNDP Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to critical issues such as gender equality and climate change.
Coster-Waldau was born in Rudkøbing, Denmark, the son of Hanne Søborg Coster, a librarian,[1] and Jørgen Oscar Fritzer Waldau (died 1998). He has spoken in interviews about his father’s problems with alcohol, as well as his parents’ divorce.[1] He has two older sisters, and was raised mainly by his mother.[2] He grew up in Tybjerg, a small village between Ringsted and Næstved in southern Zealand.[1][2] Coster-Waldau was the youngest actor to enter the Danish National School of Theatre and Contemporary Dance (Danish: Statens Teaterskole), where he was educated from 1989 to 1993.
Coster-Waldau made his stage debut as Laertes in Hamlet at the Betty Nansen Theater. His role in the film Nightwatch (1994) brought him fame in his native country.[3] He then went on to play in Simon Staho’s Wildside (1998), which he also cowrote, and starred in Danish films such as Misery Harbour (1999). He made his British début alongside Clive Owen, Jude Law and Mick Jagger in Bent(1997).
In 2001, he began his U.S. career in Ridley Scott‘s Black Hawk Down as Medal of Honor recipient Gary Gordon. Coster-Waldau says “My first U.S. movie was Black Hawk Down and a friend helped me put myself on tape up on the attic over my apartment in Copenhagen. We shipped it out and I got lucky.”[5]
Coster-Waldau used his success to take roles on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly his native Scandinavia.[6]
He later landed a lead role in Michael Apted‘s Enigma and also appeared as a villain in the action film My Name is Modesty (based upon the Modesty Blaise comic strip). Scott brought Coster-Waldau back for his 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven. Richard Loncraine, who cast the actor in Wimbledon in 2004, cast him in Firewall two years later, in 2006.[3] In 2007, he played John Amsterdam, an immortal New York homicide detective who will become mortal after he finds his true love, in the short-lived Fox television series New Amsterdam.[7] As a result of filming that series’ pilot, Coster-Waldau obtained his Screen Actors Guildcard. He later recalled in a 2015 interview in TV Guide, “Finally getting my SAG card was huge for me…I got so excited I went straight to the SAG online shop and bought four mugs with SAG logo. [I] still have those mugs!”
Coster-Waldau at the premiere of the third season of Game of Thronesin March 2013
From 2011 to 2019, Coster-Waldau played Jaime Lannister in the HBO hit series Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin‘s best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novel series. He commented about the character “What’s not to like about Jaime? As an actor I couldn’t ask for a better role”.[5] For his role as Jaime Lannister he has received several accolades, including Primetime Emmy Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Critics’ Choice Television Award,[9] Saturn Award[10] and People’s Choice Award nominations.[11]
In 2011, he also starred alongside Sam Shepard in Mateo Gil’s feature Blackthorn, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.[12] Later the same year he starred in Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters. The film went on to be the highest-grossing Norwegian film of all-time[13] and received very positive reviews including a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Foreign Film.[14] Coster-Waldau starred in the 2013 horror film Mama alongside Jessica Chastain, which then debuted at number one in the US box office[15] and grossed over $140 million worldwide.[16] He went on to play Sykes, a military weapons expert in the science fiction action thriller film Oblivion. The same year he co-starred with Juliette Binoche in Erik Poppe’s drama A Thousand Times Good Night. In 2014, he starred in Susanne Bier‘s Danish thriller A Second Chance as Andreas, a police officer forced to make a difficult choice. In 2016, Coster-Waldau appeared in the action-fantasy film Gods of Egypt as Horus.
In early 2017, he starred in E.L. Katz‘s dark comedy Small Crimes which premiered at South by Southwest film festival on 11 March 2017, to positive reviews. Coster-Waldau then appeared in the Danish film 3 Things, a thriller about a prime suspect of a bank robbery who negotiates the terms of his witness protection deal. He starred in Roman Waugh’s prison film Shot Caller, which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival on 16 June 2017. Since January 2018 he has been the L’Oréal Paris global spokesperson for the company’s Men Expert line of products.
In May 2017, it was announced that he is attached to star in Domino, a film directed by Brian De Palma. The film was released on May 31, 2019.
Coster-Waldau is set to star in The Silencing, a thriller directed by Robin Pront, and Suicide Tourist by Jonas Alexander Arnby. He filmed in secret the upcoming movie Notat by Ole Christian Madsen. Notat is based on events surrounding the 2015 Copenhagen shootings and is due for release by the end of 2019. In late 2019 he will portray Macbeth in a production of Shakespeare’s tragedy directed by Matt Shakman at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.
Although Coster-Waldau is not religious, he was baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran in the Danish National Church during his youth, like the vast majority of Danes, and viewed his confirmation as a big moment in his life when he first identified as becoming an adult.
He married Nukâka, a Greenlandic actress and singer, in 1997, and they live in Kongens Lyngby with their two daughters as well as two dogs.
Their daughter Filippa has starred in a Danish short film, The Girl and the Dogs, which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. Their other daughter, Safina has starred in a Danish Christmas TV-series named Theo og Den Magiske Talisman in December 2018 as the main character Simone. The TV-series was watched by more than 700,000 people in December 2018.
His father-in-law is Josef Motzfeldt, a member of the Parliament of Greenland and former leader of the Community of the People party.
He is a supporter of English football club Leeds United and he is a member of the Leeds United Supporters’ Trust.
In September 2017, Coster-Waldau has signed on to narrate one of the fairytales for GivingTales, the celebrity storytelling app for children and adults alike. He is going to narrate “The Steadfast Tin Soldier“, on which he commented, “I am from Denmark and Hans Christian Andersen is part of our culture and I am very proud being part of this project. ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ is a beautiful love story which we can all relate to.”
Coster-Waldau has been supporting the Danish Red Cross since 2003. In 2016, he announced a Game of Thrones campaign-contest in order to support the RED foundation which aims to raise awareness and fight AIDS.”My main mission as UNDP Goodwill Ambassador will be to raise awareness and support for the Global Goals for a better future for all, which cannot be achieved without empowering women and protecting our planet,”
—Coster-Waldau on his mission as UNDP Goodwill Ambassador in 2016
Since September 2016 he has been appointed a UNDP Goodwill Ambassador to raise awareness and support the United Nations‘ Sustainable Development Goals, an action to end poverty, fight inequality and stop climate change. In 2017 Coster-Waldau partnered with Google, using Street View to document the impact of global warming in Greenland, in order to increase awareness and highlight climate change. After participating in a female empowerment initiative in Kenya, on the occasion of International Women’s Day in 2017, he wrote a pledge calling for all fathers to support gender equality and women’s empowerment, including those women who live in extreme poverty and are exposed to practises like child marriage.[49] In September 2017 he was one of the speakers in The Spotlight Initiative, a European Union–United Nations action to eliminate violence against women and girls, after kicking off the women’s amateur World Cup.[51] In October 2017, he traveled to Maldives to report the global warming effects resuming his role as a United Nations Development Program Goodwill Ambassador.
In early 2018, he and several other Danish artists signed a manifesto demanding zero tolerance for sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault in the Danish film and stage arts industry. In June 2018, he kicked off The Lion’s Share fund’s launch, an action in which when an advertising campaign uses an image of an animal, the advertiser will donate 0.5% of the paid media spending of that campaign to the fund.
