Ville Juhana Haapasalo is a Finnish stage and film actor who has worked in Finland and Russia.
Education
Haapasalo was educated in Saint St. Petersburg at the Academy of Performing Arts of the Saint St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy. He studied there from 1991-1995. In his first year of study, he was mugged nine times.
He knew no Russian when he began studying.
Career
His acting career started in 1995, after finishing his studies in Saint St. Petersburg. In 2003, he was honored with the State Prize of the Russian Federation for his role of Veikko in the film The Cuckoo directed by Aleksandr Rogozhkin. Haapasalo"s career got a huge lift immediately after his graduation for his appearance in 1995 in a Russian comedy Peculiarities of the National Hunt.
Although his fame comes mostly from film, he also writes for the screen, acts in theaters, and does television cinema.
He also appeared in Finland"s Ministry of Transport and Communications" 1998 campaign National Features of Driving instructing Russians on Finnish road rules. He is more widely recognized in Russia than in his country of origin Finland.
Recently, however, he has hosted and starred in quite a number of travel shows on Finnish television