Swedish actress Noomi Rapace (born 1979) landed her first small film role as a seven-year-old in the Icelandic Viking drama “The Shadow of the Raven” and decided then and there to pursue a career in acting. The Swedish actress’s career spans a wide range, from portraying an Icelandic Viking to portraying Mother Theresa.
Noomi Rapace achieved international fame with her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film adaptations of the Millennium series (2009): The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. For her performance in the Millennium series, Rapace won two Nymphe d’Ors, a Guldbagge Award, and a Satellite Award as Best Actress, amongst others, and was nominated for a BAFTA Award, an International Emmy Award, and a European Film Award. Following the success of the Millennium series, Rapace has gone on to star in American movies.
Image: Rapace played goth hacker Lisbeth Salander in the ‘Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ series. CREDIT: Alamy
Following her breakthrough, she starred in Pernilla August’s “Skyggesiden” (“The Shadow Side”). In 2011, she played Madame Simza Heron in the sequel to “Sherlock Holmes” and starred in the Norwegian thriller “Babycall,” directed by Pål Sletaune.
She left home at the age of 15 and enrolled in a theatre school in Stockholm.
In 2009, at Södra Blasieholmen in Stockholm, Noomi held her first international press conference, where she panicked when reporters asked if they had called her from Hollywood yet. Did she really understand what the role of Lisbeth Salander entailed?
International success
In November 2012, she appeared in a Rolling Stones video for the single “Doom and Gloom”, shot in the studios of the Cité du Cinéma by Luc Besson in Saint-Denis. In 2013, she starred alongside Rachel McAdams in Brian De Palma’s erotic thriller Passion, an English-language remake of the 2010 French psychological thriller Love Crime. They both appeared in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, but did not share scenes. Rapace also appeared in Niels Arden Oplev’s crime thriller Dead Man Down, alongside Isabelle Huppert and Colin Farrell.
Noomi Rapace has no address. In recent years, she has been commuting between filming and preparing for roles in the United States, Europe, and Scandinavia. Not having a base is not a problem, she says. She has never needed a haven.
In 2014, she appeared as Nadia in Michael Roskam’s thriller The Drop, alongside Tom Hardy, Matthias Schoenaerts, and James Gandolfini. In September 2014, she was the subject of the short film A Portrait of Noomi Rapace, directed by artist and designer Aitor Throup and scored by Flying Lotus. In the same year, Rapace appeared in the video for the single “eez-eh” by Kasabian. In 2015, she starred as Raisa Demidova in Daniel Espinosa’s Child 44, opposite Tom Hardy (her co-star in The Drop), also starring Gary Oldman, Vincent Cassel, Jason Clarke, and Joel Kinnaman.
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Related: Swedish Film in English Version Starring Tom Hanks
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“I never read about myself. I never read reviews or criticisms,” says Rapace. “The celebrity machine is built on uninteresting and short-term constructs: The celebrity press constantly needs new people to write about, amazing people, people who make mistakes, who are too fat or too anorexic.”
She starred in the 2016 spy thriller Unlocked, alongside Michael Douglas, John Malkovich, Orlando Bloom, and Toni Collette, as well as in the science fiction horror film Rupture by Steven Shainberg. In 2017, she led the sci-fi/actioner What Happened to Monday opposite Glenn Close and Willem Dafoe. The same year, Rapace played an elf in the urban fantasy action Bright.
According to Nomi Rapace, there are no limits to how far she can allow herself to disappear into a role. What she strives for is total freedom, and to achieve that, she has to dispel her own vanity. “Going back to your own life after something like that can be pretty brutal,” she says.
In 2019, Rapace starred in the action thriller film Close, released on Netflix on January 18, 2019. That same year, Rapace starred in the psychological thriller Angel of Mine and in the television series Jack Ryan. In 2020, Rapace starred in the thriller The Secrets We Keep. In 2021, the Icelandic folk horror film Lamb premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where Rapace played the leading role of Maria. Rapace’s performance in the movie garnered significant attention, and she won the award for Best Actress at the 2021 Sitges – Catalonian International Film Festival. She was nominated for the Best Actress award at the 2021 North Texas Film Critics Association Awards.
This year, Teona Strugar Mitevska takes on Mother Teresa in the Venice premiere “Mother.” She aims to “demystify the perfect saint,” with the help of Noomi Rapace, cast in the title role.
The director says that Rapace looked for the vulnerability of the Nobel Peace Prize winner. “Noomi’s strong and audacious, and it’s evident. But nobody is just strong and ferocious, and nobody is just a saint. We had to find her fragility and her imperfections. Her human side, her imperfect side, her childish side, her obsessive side.”
Swedish Actress – From Icelandic Viking to Mother Theresa, Tor Kjolberg reporting.