By Roxana Hadadi | Celebrity | March 2, 2018 |
By Roxana Hadadi | Celebrity | March 2, 2018 |
The other day my partner and I were seeing Annihilation for the second time in a week because that is who we are now, and there were 10 trailers hitched onto the afternoon matinee. TEN. TRAILERS.
Way too many. Far too many! And about midway through trailer six, my partner leaned over and whispered to me, “Joel Edgerton? Is that the Joel who was in It Comes at Night? That’s not the Joel who was in Altered Carbon, is it?”
No, my boo, it is not. You were correct with your first guess!
My partner has a remarkable ability of being totally unaware of pop culture that does not directly interest him, and as someone who operates often on the dreaded FOMO, I respect that for being in total opposition to how I choose to live. But that also means that sometimes he mistakes one random white celeb guy for another, and I have to affectionately and sanctimoniously explain to him that no, Joel Edgerton was in The Great Gatsby, not Altered Carbon, although yes, it was surprising that Kinnaman was good in Altered Carbon because he was so forgettable in the mostly terrible Suicide Squad. This is about where my partner, his answer secured, lovingly but emphatically tuned out.
BUT I KEPT GOING.
This is Joel Kinnaman:
He looks pretty good shirtless, I was fairly irritated that we didn’t get full-frontal nudity from him in Altered Carbon, and he used to date Olivia Munn.
He looked like this in Altered Carbon:
And like this in House of Cards:
And like this in Suicide Squad:
And like this in Run All Night:
And like this in The Killing, the (increasingly bad) show that ignited my thirst:
He is not Alexander Skarsgård, although they are both Swedish (Kinnaman’s non-show-biz last name is Nordström). This is Skarsgaard:
I do think we saw Skarsgård do full-frontal on True Blood, right? If we did … blessings.
In contrast, this is Joel Edgerton:
He often looks dashing wearing tweeds and turtlenecks on the red carpet (hello, Tom & Lorenzo archives), and he was in the trailers for both Red Sparrow and Gringo that played before Annihilation. Gringo … is a movie, I guess:
Edgerton looked like this in Bright, which I had forgotten until just this moment, dammit:
And like this in It Comes at Night, which was fine and scary sometimes but mostly kind of a shrug:
And like this in Loving, for which his co-star Ruth Negga received a Best Actress Oscar nomination last year:
And like this in Exodus: Gods and Kings; let us always remember that white-washed goddamn nightmare:
He is not Jason Clarke, although you would be forgiven for thinking they are the same dude, because they both appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby …
… and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.
But Jason Clarke was in Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups with Joel Kinnaman! So really, we’ve come full circle.
This has been your Joel Kinnaman vs. Joel Edgerton primer. You’re welcome.
[Header photograph from Getty Images]