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Europeans must think that North Americans are deaf. How else to explain the fact that Swedish actor Peter Stormare has played a German (in The Big Lebowski), a Russian (in Armageddon), and...an American? (Strange but true -- in Dancer in the Dark.) The rationale must be that any "Continental" accent is indistinguishable (to the North American ear, anyway) from any other; all those foreigners are the same, anyway, right?

Peter Stormare's prodigious height, deep voice, and stoned delivery combined to make his Gaear Grimsrud -- his most memorable and celebrated role to date, in Fargo -- an indelible memory. [Attention: Spoilers] While the start of the movie casts Gaear as the laconic muscle behind Steve Buscemi's bug-eyed, hopped-up-on-goofballs performance as Carl Showalter, Stormare adds increasingly disturbing layers to the role as the movie progresses. When Showalter is spotted by a couple of hapless motorists, while dragging a dead cop across the unlit highway, it is Gaear who has the presence of mind to chase them down and shoot them in an execution-type deal. While Showalter runs around Minneapolis trying ineffectually to chase down Jerry Lundegaard, bleeding like a stuck pig and mowing down any opposition he finds, Gaear takes the initiative to murder his captive, Jerry's wife. Stormare has fewer lines than any other major character, but he imbues them with more menace than anyone else is able to impart.

Peter Stormare is probably a perfectly nice man in real life. But if I met him in real life, I think I would have a hard time forgetting the image of him desultorily eating canned foods and gasping at a development in his soap opera while a woman lay dead on the floor a few feet away from him. At at least, in that role, he actually got to play a Swede -- an honour Hollywood may never allow him to repeat.