Interview: Peter Stormare on Swedish cuisine, film noir, and ‘Fargo’
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Peter Stormare is a Swedish American actor you’ve seen in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Armageddon, Minority Report, and lots of other movies you love.
For Noir Month, we chatted with him about his experience shooting the neo-noir classic Fargo, along with his thoughts on Swedish cuisine, how to get eaten by CGI dinosaurs, what people often get wrong about him, and the advice he received from a legendary director.
Check out the Letterboxd list of all the movies mentioned in this interview.
1. What is the Peter Stormare origin story?
I was born on Jupiter and I got down here somehow in a small village hamlet in northern Sweden. It’s a mystery to me how, in a village of a thousand people, I could fall into the path of acting, directing, writing, and producing. Nobody in this little village had done anything. But curiosity took me and I followed it. I wanna learn about life as much as I can while I’m alive.
2. Describe your perfect day.
Hopefully I’m shooting, directing, or writing something extraordinary. But my second choice is to go on a hike in the mountains, then sit in my hot tub and swim in my little pool. Then sit and create music or write. After dinner, I have a beer or two and go to bed at like 8:30. That’s a perfect day for me.
3. Who’s an actor who was so good that you were just like, Wow!
I did this thing with John Travolta. To work with him, to do a couple of scenes with him, was really great, because he was really adamant of getting all the lines right. We spent a lot of time getting the characters down and prepped. He was super professional and very, very nice. He has a gift from up above.
4. In our book Fargo is one of the great American films, right up there with The Godfather. When you were filming it, did you have a sense that you were making something special, or was it just another gig?
So that whole production was like a family thing. It was really endearing to me because I’d worked with Frances McDormand in a play in New York called The Swan. The Coens saw it and later on asked me, “Do you want to be part of this?” I read the script and said, “I know I’m an immigrant, but I have the perfect darn Minnesota accent. Oh yah, yoo yoo. Come on in everybody, let’s have a drink together.” They said it was based on true guys and a true woman, so that’s the way [my character Gaear Grimsrud] was. He smoked all the time, and fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth.
5. You wake up and your job for the day is to get eaten alive by a pack of tiny CGI dinosaurs. How do you prepare?
Well, you have to be at Stan Winston’s shop out here in the valley, and you become 11 years old again when you see all these great things from all these famous movies Stan Winston and his team created—the Alien from Alien number one. For The Lost World, three of those compys [Compsognathus dinosaurs] were maneuvered by guys who had all these cords running to a little machine, where they had joysticks and they moved them around. The rest were just like rubber ducks.
When we shot it, I’m set up with the fake blood capsules in my mouth and I chew on it and the blood gets out, and you can see the blood on my lip. So I take this little rubber duck and I put it on my lip, which I think looks cool. I asked Stan and he said it looks really cool, and then Steven says, “That looks really good. And I don’t have to shoot it just in profile. I can shoot it from the front, and that’s more scary.” So to be eaten by the dinosaurs and come up with some of my own ideas, and to be in the workshop—that was one of my most memorable scenes.
6. What’s something people often get wrong about you?
That I’m Russian. That's like slapping me. I’m a Swede—we hate Russians. We don’t raise this in Sweden, but we hate Russians. “Thought you were Russian” is the biggest insult you can ever give a Swede.
“To be eaten by the dinosaurs and come up with some of my own ideas, and to be in the workshop—that was one of my most memorable scenes. ”
7. Swedish or American cuisine?
I don’t know… Just walk out and head down to Andersonville in Chicago and order some meatballs from Ann Sather. Andersonville is a nice area still, because there's a lot of Swedish stuff there. But I go to the little delicatessens and buy something to bring back home, because the restaurants have gone a little bit berserk on the Scandinavian cuisine. They’ve slaughtered it. We eat more clean than Americans do. Everything out here becomes butter, butter, butter.
8. You’re curating a film noir festival. Which films do you show (and why)?
I call this film noir even if it’s not really, but it’s one of the best movies I know and I’ve seen it many times: Hour of the Wolf by Ingmar Bergman. It’s set on a small island with an artist and his wife, and it’s rekindling all these demons and they come alive around them. I also have to go Fritz Lang. Any of his early American or German movies, like M. I watched all his movies from his start up to the movies he made here. They got worse and worse and worse in the U.S. The machinery sort of chewed him up and spit him out. But they are really, really beautiful to watch, and they are on YouTube for free. So I recommend Fritz Lang to everybody.
9. If you had to change careers tomorrow, what would you do and why?
Your gig, interviewing people. Run a radio station and just play my own music. But I don’t have that time, unfortunately. I’m still working. That’s the beauty of our profession, our art: in a way we’re like painters—you can paint until you fall off your stool. Max von Sydow was shooting up to like a month before he passed away. It’s beautiful.
“That’s the beauty of our profession, our art: in a way we’re like painters—you can paint until you fall off your stool.”
10. What’s a movie prop you would love to own (and why)?
My nipple clamps from a Spike Lee movie I was in, Girl 6. Naomi Campbell took them from me and said, “I want to check these out, those look so mean.” She put them on and said, “Oh, they’re very friendly. I like them, they look cool.” But I had to leave them with the props department. I wish she had signed them.
11. What’s the best advice you ever received?
I grew up working with Ingmar Bergman. He was like a mentor and a surrogate father to me—because my father lived in Africa—and he took me in like one of his kids. He was very nice to me. I was under 30 then, and I’d made a career in Sweden on stage. I got a lot of articles about me and I got some great reviews. Bergman took me aside and said, “Hey you, don’t fuck up your life on drugs and alcohol, because it’s no problem to be declared a fucking genius when you pass away by the age of 30. The hard thing is to be loyal to the gift and the talent you’ve been given from up above. You have to nurture that gift. You have to give it fuel and give it your love. And never, never, never give up on helping that talent nourish inside of you.” That’s something I have sounding in my ear all the time.
12. What’s next for you?
A lot of things. 2023 is fully booked, hopefully. I’m going to South Africa to be in the new Taylor Sheridan show called 1923. There’s a movie going to be shot in Crete. We should be there in April, which is a beautiful month in Crete, so I’m looking forward to that. And some of my own material we’re gonna shoot as well, me directing some and have other people direct. I might go back to Sweden to see snow and go skiing with my brother to do some downhill. Hopefully won’t break anything, but I would love to do that. I need it. It’s like a drug.
+1. What’s your question for us?
Will the Bears go to the Super Bowl this year? Or the Packers?
That’s a hard no on the Bears. The Packers, you never know. They always have a chance with Aaron Rodgers, but it’s not looking good this year.