M.I.A.: Actors, acting and Swedish superspy Carl Hamilton

Carl Gustaf Gilbert Hamilton is the best-known of Swedish fictional spies – in Scandinavia at least. The brain child of novelist Jan Guillou, Hamilton is Sweden’s James Bond or Dirty Harry. Five prominent Swedish actors – Stellan Skarsgård, Peter Haber, Stefan Sauk, Peter Stormare and Mikael Persbrandt – have played the spy on-screen, yet unlike Sean Connery and Daniel Craig as Bond or Clint Eastwood as Harry, their performances have been largely unnoticed, even in Sweden. This article studies their acting with two goals in mind: (1) to show how actors have shaped Sweden’s best-known secret agent on film and for TV, and (2) to elucidate how their acting decisions respond to genre customs and constraints. In conclusion I comment on why the screen Hamiltons have not found audiences outside Scandinavia and indicate ways that transnational action genres have helped reshape Swedish culture, transforming one of its national icons, Hamilton, in the process.