Aug 27, 1953

Arbrå, Sweden

Stormare began his career with the Swedish Royal National Theatre, to which he belonged eleven years. In 1990 he took a leading position (Associate Artistic Director) at the Tokyo Globe Theatre and made a name for himself through various Shakespeare performances including Hamlet. Three years later, he went to New York and mainly took part there in English language productions. In Sweden, he has worked with Ingmar Bergman, by whom he was apparently discovered. He has also played Carl Hamilton, a ... ... (read more...) fictional Swedish secret agent similar to James Bond.<br/><br/>

He was critically praised for his role as a quiet and ruthless villain (with Steve Buscemi) in Fargo (1996), and later played a sleazy, unlicensed "eye doctor" ("Solomon Eddie") in Minority Report. In 1998 he appeared in "The Frogger", a Seinfeld episode where he played a "rogue electrician" known as "Slippery Pete". He also portrayed Uli Kunkel in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski, as well as playing Lev, the Russian Cosmonaut in 1999's Armageddon, and Alexi in the 2003 summer blockbuster Bad Boys II. In the 2005 film Constantine, Stormare played Lucifer. He played an interrogator in the 2005 movie The Brothers Grimm. His first major character in television was on the show Prison Break in 2005, where he played John Abruzzi.<br/><br/>

He also was the voice of Mattias Nilsson in the video game "Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction," the voice of Isair in the computer game "Icewind Dale 2," and the voice of Pvt. Johann Strauss in the video game "Quake 4."<br/><br/>

In February 2006, he starred as "Wolfgang" in Volkswagen's "Un-pimp ze Auto" series of television commercials. He plays a German engineer who "un-pimps" tricked-out economy cars by destroying them using humorous methods and then giving the shocked owner a new Volkswagen GTI. He speaks in urban American English with an exaggerated German accent, saying things like "German engineering in da haus, ja" and "representing Deutschland." The commercials are a parody of MTV's popular show Pimp My Ride in which auto-body mechanics give run down, older cars an urban makeover with things like tinted windows, spoilers, flashy rims, and loud stereos. The commercials were never aired in Germany itself.<br/><br/>

Stormare is contracted to play the main character in the Swedish upcoming movie "Svartvattnet", which is going to be filmed in Sweden and Norway during 2007.