From secret agent, The Hypnotist and The Hobbit to single father

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

17/09/2012 - Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt has a busy schedule this autumn: currently he is No 1 on the local charts in Swedish director Tobias Falk's Agent Hamilton - But Not If It Concerns Your Daughter, starring as Sweden's most famous secret agent Carl Hamilton in the second of three thrillers from Johan Mardell's Pampas Produktion.

On September 28, he will again lend his portrait to the cinema posters, this time for Swedish Hollywood-director Lasse Hallström's The Hypnotist [trailer], Börje Hansson, Peter Possne and Bertil Ohlsson's first of eight thrillers by Swedish author Lars Kepler, produced for Svensk Filmindustri AB-Sonet Film AB, and last week named as Sweden's official candidate for an 2013 Oscar nomination.

As Beorn he will join UK author J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit universe in New Zealand director Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which will be launched internationally on December 14 - but meanwhile he will have finished the shoot for his next local feature, Swedish director Kjell-Åke Andersson's Nobody Owns Me.

Pia Gradvall has scripted Linderborg's 2007 autobiographical novel about the little girl who grows up with her hard-working, slightly alcoholic but loving father from when she is four, when her mother leaves them. In spite of all odds she graduates from the University of Uppsala with a doctorate in history.

Persbrandt will play the father, Leif Andersson, in the depiction of "a lone father's relationship with his daughter, the destructive power of alcohol, a child's vulnerability - love, betrayal and social politics in 1970s Sweden". Francy Suntinger produces the film for FilmLance International AB, for Svensk Filmindustri AB to release.