Background

Ethnicity: His mother was born in Casablanca, Morocco, to a Danish father and a French mother.

Asbæk was born on March 2, 1982, in Copenhagen, the son of gallery owners Maria Patricia (née Tonn) and Jacob A. Asbæk, who run Galerie Asbæk in Copenhagen. His father is from Hammel. He has two older brothers, Thomas Asbæk, an art consultant at Asbæk Art Consulting, and Martin Asbæk, a gallery owner at Martin Asbæk Gallery.

The nickname Pilou came from his mother's French ancestry, and is a French version of the word Pip. The nickname is because Asbæk was the youngest son, in French, "petit" for littlest, "Little Philip." Pilou is an abbreviation of Petit Philip.

Education

Asbæk went to boarding school at Herlufsholm School where he was active in drama productions. He graduated from Denmark's Danish National School of Performing Arts in summer 2008.

Career

In 2009, Asbæk played soldier David Grüner in an episode of the second season of another Danish TV series, The Killing. He had his breakthrough in 2010 as the inmate Rune in Lindholm & Noer’s prison drama R for which he won the prize for Best actor at The Danish Critic Association Award, Bodil, and at the Danish Film Academy Awards, Robert.

In 2011, Asbæk starred in the film, R, as a Danish convict, portraying a harrowing prison experience. In 2012, he starred in another Tobias Lindholm film called A Hijacking, about Somalian piracy, for which he transformed himself physically, gaining weight to imbue the role with method acting. In 2013, Asbæk portrayed a flamboyant Danish tycoon named Simon Spies in the movie Sex, Drugs & Taxation.

In 2014, he starred in the Luc Besson film, Lucy and in the same year he appeared in the film, Silent Heart, in which his mother-in-law, Danish actress Vigga Bro, plays the character Lisbeth. In 2015, Asbæk collaborated with director Tobias Lindholm in the film, A War, playing a soldier in Afghanistan. In 2017, he played Batou in Ghost in the Shell.

Asbæk has also appeared in TV series. He played soldier David Grüner in an episode of the second season of another Danish TV series, The Killing. From 2010 to 2013, he played the spin-doctor, Kasper Juul, in the critically lauded Danish TV series Borgen which is about the politics of a female Prime Minister of Denmark. In 2016, he joined the HBO series Game of Thrones in Season 6 as the ruthless pirate captain Euron Greyjoy.

Asbaek plays the lead role as police investigator Anders Olsen in the upcoming 2018 movie The Guardian Angel, opposite Josh Lucas. Written and directed by Arto Halonen, the movie is based on actual events. The plot revolves around the bizarre case of Hypnose murders which took place in Copenhagen in 1951.

Achievements

• 

  Pilou Asbæk is a successful actor who is mainly known for his roles in the television series Game of Thrones, and movies Lucy, The Great Wall and Ben-Hur.
  
  He has been awarded the 2010’s Danish Film Academy Robert Award for Best Actor, 2010’s Danish Film Critics Association's Bodil Awards, 2011’s Berlin International Film Festival Shooting Stars Award and 2012’s Ove Sprogøe Prize.
  
  

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Kapgang (Speed Walking)

    (Martin (14) is forced to deal with confused sexuality and...)

    2014
  • Woodshock

    (A haunted young woman spirals in the wake of profound los...)

    2017
  • Fasandræberne

    (The murder of young twins initially implicates a group of...)

    2014
  • Lucy

    (Scarlett Johansson is Lucy, a woman accidentally caught i...)

    2014
  • The Great Wall

    (Starring Matt Damon, The Great Wall tells the story of an...)

    2016
  • Kapringen

    (The crew of a Danish cargo ship is hijacked by Somali pir...)

    2012
  • Ben-Hur

    (Ben-Hur is the story of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a pr...)

    2016
  • To verdener

    (The daughter of a Jehovah's Witness is forced to choose b...)

    2008
  • A War

    (The story of a Danish commander, who is accused of civil ...)

    2015
  • R

    (The R of the title stands for the young protagonist, Rune...)

    2010
  • Ghost in the Shell

    (Major (Scarlett Johansson) is the first of her kind: a hu...)

    2017
  • April 9th

    (In the early morning of April 9th 1940 the Danish army is...)

    2015
  • The Whistleblower

    (This ripped-from-the-headlines thriller is inspired by ac...)

    2010
  • Overlord

    (Nothing can prepare you for the mind-blowing mayhem that ...)

    2018
  • Silent Heart

    (Three generations of a family coming together over a week...)

    2014
  • Dig og mig

    (Three girls meet in a hospital. Struggling to come to ter...)

    2008

• TV series

  • Borgias: Season 1-3

    (In the fifteenth century, Pope Alexander VI tries to cont...)

    2013
  • Game of Thrones: The Complete Seasons 1-8

    (Nine noble families fight for control over the mythical l...)

    2016

Religion

Pilou said:

"I'm not a religious guy at all."

Politics

Pilou Asbæk compared Euron Greyjoy to Donald Trump:

"Trump starts out by saying, ‘We need to build walls, we need to do this.’ He’s very bombastic in what he’s saying and his approach to the world. Euron was very bombastic, he was humiliating his niece, he was humiliating his nephew with some rhetoric. He wants to make (Pyke) great again."

Views

Quotations: "When you watch the films that I'm inspired by - from the '60s and '70s - it's not about the special effects: it's about the story; it's about characters and relationships."

"If it was up to me, we would eliminate close-ups and beautiful light and sound - because we want to go back to basics."

"The most exciting thing about joining 'Game Of Thrones' is joining 'Game Of Thrones.'"

"I think if you just made a film that says, 'This is anti-war,' and you had to spend two hours explaining that... you don't like war? Wow, that's original. Know what I mean?"

"I used to read reviews - I read a lot of the reviews when I did 'Borgen,' but the thing is, people were so harsh that I talked to my wife about it, and I said this is too tough - the people are too personal and too idiotic to understand it, in my mind."

"Overnight, I became a public figure."

"Guess what? Human beings are complex."

Personality

At his audition for Euron Greyjoy in Game of Thrones (2011), he improvised the second out of 2 scenes. His email hadn't worked so he'd only received the first scene. Never had he been so unprepared for an audition before, he said himself.

Physical Characteristics: Hair color - regular brown

Eye color - blue

Height - 6ft ¼ in (183.5 cm)

Interests

• Artists

  Kurt Trampedach

• Sport & Clubs

  Soccer

Connections

Asbæk's wife is playwright Anna Bro, who has been his partner for 10 years (since 2008). She is the daughter of the actors Hans Henrik Clemensen and Vigga Bro and comes from an extended family of actors.

Asbæk's godfather was the late artist, Kurt Trampedach.

Father:

Jacob A. Asbæk

Mother:

Maria Patricia (née Tonn)

Spouse:

Anna Bro

(born February 15, 1980)

Brother:

Martin Asbæk

Brother:

Thomas Asbæk

Daughter:

Agnes Asbæk

colleague:

Kit Harington

(born 26 December 1986)

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colleague:

Emilia Clarke

(born 23 October 1986)

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colleague:

Gwendoline Christie

(born 28 October 1978)

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colleague:

Jacob Anderson

(born 18 June 1990)

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colleague:

Peter Dinklage

(born June 11, 1969)

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colleague:

Sophie Turner

(born 21 February 1996)

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colleague:

Isaac Hempstead-Wright

(born April 9, 1999)

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colleague:

Maisie Williams

(born 15 April 1997)

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colleague:

Alfie Allen

(born 12 September 1986)

He is an English actor.

colleague:

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

(born 27 July 1970)

He is a Danish actor, producer and screenwriter.

colleague:

Lena Headey

(born 3 October 1973)

She is an English actress.

colleague:

Joseph Dempsie

Joseph Maxwell Dempsie is an English actor. He is known for the roles of Chris Miles in the E4 teen comedy-drama Skins (2007–2008) and Gendry in Game of Thrones.

colleague:

Hannah Murray

(born 1 July 1989)

She is an English actress best known for portraying Cassie Ainsworth in the E4 teen drama series Skins (2007–2008; 2013), for which she was the recipient of a BAFTA Audience Award, and Gilly in the HBO series Game of Thrones (2012–2019), for which she has been nominated along with her castmates for two Screen Actors Guild Awards as ensemble players.

colleague:

John Bradley

John Bradley West, credited professionally as John Bradley, is an English actor. He is best known for his role as Samwell Tarly in the HBO fantasy TV series Game of Thrones.

References

• Entertainment WEEKLY Magazine March 15-22, 2019 PILOU ASBAEK as EURON GREVJOV & as THEON GREYJOY Cover, GAME OF THRONES Intel and Top Secret Report