Finnish Hollywood

Finnish Hollywood

Finnish characters in Hollywood movies and in international cinema

	Norma Nurmi Carole Lombard played this fictitious Finnish-named track and field runner star in the Mack Sennet short comedy Run, Girl, Run in 1928. Wikipedia: "During the 1920s, [the Finnish runner Paavo] Nurmi was the best middle and long distance runner in the world, setting world records on distances between 1500 m and 20 km. Nurmi won a total of nine gold and three silver medals in the 12 events he competed at the Olympic Games from 1920 to 1928." IMDb
	Pauli Lindström [The Finn, The Mute, The Dummy] The creepy looking Yorkshire born Skelton Knaggs had the best role of his career when he played the fictitious Finnish mute seaman narrator in Val Lewton's horror thriller The Ghost Ship in 1943. The first officer says of him in the beginning of the film: "A Finn. Keep an eye on that man. I don't want any trouble on this ship", indicating how Finns were feared on ships. Lindtröm has special powers and saves the hero in the end. Knaggs died April 30th 1955 of cirrhosis of the liver in Los Angeles, California at the age of 44. Lindström's first monologue: sound clip from Missing Link IMDb
	Finnish-American Speaker The Swedish secretary and confidant of Greta Garbo, Sven Hugo Borg played a Finnish-American speaker at the Finnish-American rally in the June Allyson comedy-drama The Reformer and the Redhead (1950). In the same film there was also a Finnish guest at the same rally played by the Swedish comedian Tor Johnson. IMDb
	Aino [Ina] Marina Vlady played the fictitious Finnish wood witch in love with a French engineer in the French fantasy romance The Blonde Witch (1956) filmed in Sweden. The story is set in Finland and the local characters are Finns, but they are all played by Swedish actors in Swedish dialogue. IMDb
	Deputy Sheriff Sulo Norwegian John Qualen played a deputy sheriff named Sulo in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), set in the Finnish area of the North Peninsula of Michigan. IMDb
	Miss Finland Tracy Butler played a Miss Finland met at a men's magazine in Season 4, Episode 5: The Man from Emperor of the Dick Van Dyke Show in 1964. IMDb
	Lauri Törni [aka Larry Thorne] John Wayne's chacter in The Green Berets (1968) was based on the real life Finnish WWII hero who later became an American Vietnam war legend. News item IMDb
	Miss Finland Austrian beauty queen Inge Jaklin played a fictitious Miss Finland in the adventure series It Takes a Thief in the episode: "38-23-36" (1969) as one of the international beauties suspected of espionage touring the U.S. as guests of the State Department before competing in the Miss United Nations Beauty Pageant, in N.Y.. IMDb
	Finnish girl Philomena McDonagh played a Finnish girl in the UK TV-series World's End in 1981. IMDb
	Finnish Doctor The classic German star of the silents Fred Döderlein played a fictitious character named Finnish Doctor in the John Irving drama The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). It was to be his last film and he died the next year. IMDb
	Whale hunters Evil Finnish whale hunters (fictitious, as there are no Finnish whalers) were the antagonists in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). Played in crude Finnish by non-Finnish actors. IMDb
	Juha Valjakkala & Maija Roiha A real life Finnish triple murderer couple on rampage in Sweden. Played by the Finnish Antti Reini and Maria Heiskanen in the Swedish film Il Capitano (1991). News item IMDb IMDb
	Thorstenson Finlandson In the Coen brothers political satire Hudsucker Proxy (1984) there was a fictitious Finnish stockholder character named Thorstenson Finlandson, played by the editor of the film, the Oscar winner Thom Noble. IMDb
	Vampira [Maila Nurmi] Lisa Marie played the real life Finnish actress Vampira in the Johnny Depp comedy Ed Wood (1994). IMDb
	Finnish reporter and Finnish translator Mike Sanders played a Finnish Reporter and Hexa Pehlovia played a Finnish translator in the 1995 low budget scifi thriller Heatseeker. IMDb
	Lars Waara jr One of fictitious Mel Coplin's (played by Ben Stiller) father candidates in the 1996 comedy Flirting With Disaster was a Finnish liquour wareshouse employee named Lars Waara. Dialogue with a mother candidate: - Your daddy was poor. He worked in my father's liquor warehouse in Baton Rouge. - Really? Baton Rouge. - That's where you were conceived. In the liquor warehouse on the cement floor... - Wow - in Baton Rouge. Oh, my parents hated Lars. Lars Waara was his name. - Waara? Lars Waara! What kind of name is that? - Finnish. - Finnish? I'm Finnish.- I knew that. I mean, look at your face. Absolutely. IMDb
	Matti Toivonen The fictitious Finnish-Swedish patriarch of the poor family Toivonen (as opposed to the wealthy all-Swedish Bovallus-dynasty) in the Swedish daily soap Skilda Världar (1996-98) was played by Gunnar Mosén. IMDb
	Lasse Viren This real life Finnish policeman and a long distance runner star (later a conservative parliamentarian) was played by University of Oregon graduate and All-American runner Tracy Hollister in the 1997 film about America's greatest running legend Prefontaine starring Jared Leto. In the film there was also a Finnish Teammate played by Adrian Amadeus and a Finnish Runner played by Brad Tuinstra. Hollister, and a couple of other University of Oregon grads, were recruited for the film by Jeff Hollister, Tracy's father, who was another of Steve Prefontaine's teammates at Oregon. In 1998 Lasse Viren was played by Pat Porter in the Robert Towne film about Prefontaine Without Limits produced by Tom Cruise. In this film there were two Finnish Officials played by Ryan S. Warren and Michael Consoldane, plus some other characters with vaguely Finnish character names, like a Juha Vastisen played by Thomas DeBacker. Running history IMDb Prefontaine IMDb Without Limits
	The Crown Prince of Finland A fictitious titular character of a 1997 epiosode of the sitcom series The Tom Show. Played by Kevin Meaney. "After Charlie complains about the oddball guests that have appeared on the show, Tom books the visiting Crown Prince of Finland, unaware that he's a royal lush. Finland is a republic and has no royal family. IMDb TVTome
	'Braniac' Jukka Branny-Acke A fictitious Finnish ice-hockey star in the Canadian comedy-drama series Power Play (1998). Played by Mark Lutz. IMDb
	Finnish Lover German producer Andrea Willson played the fictitious Finnish Lover in the German horror thriller Night Time in 1998. The film had other Finnish characters as well: Pekka Turunen played Mr. Väänänen and Lilli Forgach played Annicki [Annikki]. There was also one Finn in the crew as Lena Niskanen was a trainee editor. IMDb
	Watto & Sebulba After the first lap of the podrace, the fictitious aliens Watto and Sebulba speak Finnish saying, "Thank You" and "You're Welcome" in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). IMDb
	Axel Torvalds A fictitious Finnish computer hacker wizard character in the 2001 action thriller Swordfish. Played by the German Rudolf Martin with the supposedly Finnish dialogue all in German. IMDb
	Finnish dwarves The members of the American rock band The Little Kingsz (Scotty F. Word, Pauly J, K-Roc and Stevie D) played the fictitious Finnish dwarves in the 2001 Ben Stiller comedy Zoolander. Quote from the film: "There was a moment last night, when she was sandwiched between the two Finnish dwarves and the Maori tribesmen, where I thought, "Wow, I could really spend the rest of my life with this woman"." IMDb
	Piirka (Pirkka) "Norway's most popular Finn" A fictitious Finnish moronic sitcom character in Norway. Played by Robert Stoltenberg. Article IMDb
	Finnish jet pilot In the closing scene of the 2002 Apocalyptic sci-fi film 28 Days Later, the surviving characters may get saved by the Finnish fighter jet pilot who circles above them and calls for a rescue helicopter. This indicates that Finland has survived the Apocalypse. IMDb
	Aileen Wuornos [Damsel of Death, The Highway Hooker, The Finnish Killer] Second generation American with Finnish maternal grandparents. Real life prositute-turned-serial-killer played by Oscar winning Charlize Theron in the 2003 movie Monster and by Jean Smart in the 1992 TV-movie Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story. There is also a documentary Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992) and an opera Wuornos about her, and several books have also been published. Crime details IMDb Monster (2003) IMDb Overkill (1992) IMDb documentary
	Kari Lehtola, born 1938 The real-life Finnish speaker of the "European Titanic" investigation comission was critically portrayed as the charcter Ovaska in Baltic Storm (2003), a German-British conspiracy thriller starring Greta Scacchi, Jürgen Prochnow and Donald Sutherland about the real-life sinking of the passenger ferry Estonia in 1994. Ovaska, played by the German Axel Milberg, was characterized as an antagonist: "Speaker of the Joint Accident Investigation Commission. He loves to hear himself talking and never gives a chance to anyone else." Produced and written partly by the Finnish Kaj Holmberg. The actual Estonia sank in Finnish territorial waters, but he film was not shot in Finland. Interview IMDb
	Karl-Gustav Kaisla The real-life American hockey legend Ryan Walter played the real-life Finn Karl-Gustav Kaisla, who was the referee at the "Miracle On Ice" in Lake Placid Winter Olympics of 1980, in the 2004 blockbuster Miracle. The Team Finland was played by Chris Rowland, Marijan Ivanisec, Dave Tomlinson and Brad McDonald. Interestingly the film concentrates on the US win over the Soviet Union in the semi-finals, though it was Finland whom the miracle team had to win in the final game to get the gold. IMDb
	Finnish Man There was a Finnish Man in episode 3670 of the UK soap series Emmerdale in 2004, played by Alistair Donkin. IMDb
	Finland Woman The Norwegian born Maja Ardal played a character called Finland Woman in the 2005 UK fantasy film shot in Canada, The Snow Queen, based on the Andersen fairy tale. IMDb
	Finnish Skating Prodigy The ten-year-old Griffin Armstorff played a fictious Finnish Skating Prodigy in the figure skating comedy Blades of Glory (2007). IMDb
	Serafina Pekkala The French-Swiss Eva Green plays the fictitious queen of the Lapland witches in the fantasy adventure His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (2007). Serafina lives by and reigns around the Lake Enara and keeps a snow goose daemon named Kaisa. Norway doubles for the Finnish Lake Inari area in the exterior scenes. Among the other 20 Finnish witches in the original story is Juta Kamainen. Wikipedia Official site IMDb