‘Hey, they were in Game of Thrones’—Where else have you seen these 50 GoT cast members?
11) NIKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU
Fans have a profound love/hate relationship with Jaime Lannister, as portrayed in all his depravity (straight-arming Bran out the window in the pilot) and nobility (his intimate connection with Brienne) by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Is Jaime ever going to truly move away from the darker anchors of his personality? It’s going to be an uphill battle, if this interview with Rolling Stone is any indication:
"Now, what if the question was put to Jamie – ‘You can either save this lady (Brienne of Tarth) or you can save your hand.’ I’m pretty sure he would save his hand, I’m sorry to say. Maybe losing his hand will make him answer that question in a different way later on in his life. For him as a character, for him as a person, I think, he needs to lose that hand."
While Coster-Waldau has recently appeared in big roles in movies like Gods of Egypt (2016), and Oblivion (2013), he started with small parts, such as the Village Sheriff in Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and Liam in Firewall (2006).
If you liked to haunt the foreign film section of your favorite now-defunct video store in the old days and you’re looking for more Coster-Waldau, you might want to check out his turn as former special forces soldier Clas Grev in the Norwegian-produced art theft caper, Headhunters (2011). It was the most popular Norwegian domestic film of the year and the 2nd most watched of all 2011 theatrical releases in the country, only beaten out by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.
One of the places you may have seen Coster-Waldau and not realized it was in Black Hawk Down (2001), where he had a small role as Delta Force sniper Gary Gordon. How did he get the part? In a 2012 interview with My Fanbase, he explained: ” … 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.”
Black Hawk Down was Coster-Waldau’s first U.S. film, although he had already made his name in Denmark for his role in the movie Nightwatch (1990). He made his stage debut in 1992 as Laertes in Hamlet at the Betty Nansen Theater.
Powered by Game of Thrones, Coster-Waldau’s career is on a meteoric rise. We’ll be seeing him in Spinning Man, Small Crimes and the Danish thriller 3 Things in 2017.