About Michael Nyqvist
Rolf Åke Mikael Nyqvist (Swedish: [ˈnŷːkvɪst]; 8 November 1960 – 27 June 2017) was a Swedish actor. Educated at the School of Drama in Malmö, he rose to prominence domestically for playing police officer John Banck in Beck (1997-1998) and for his leading role in the 2002 film Grabben i graven bredvid. He later received international attention for his role as Mikael Blomkvist in the 2009 film adaptations of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, as well as reprising the role in the accompanying television series. He also notably portrayed antagonists Kurt Hendricks in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) and Viggo Tarasov in John Wick (2014). In 2004, he played the leading role in As It Is in Heaven which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 77th Academy Awards. == Early life == Rolf Åke Mikael Nyqvist was born on 8 November 1960 in Stockholm, the son of Marcello Lo Cicero, an Italian pharmacist from Florence, and a Swedish mother (born 1941). As a child, he was adopted from an orphanage by Åke Nyqvist and his wife Gerd Ellen Maria (Nordborg) Nyqvist. At age 17, Nyqvist spent his senior year of high school as an exchange student in Omaha, Nebraska. 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. He returned to Sweden and was accepted at ballet school, but gave it up after one year.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.