The versatility of Icelandic actor Damon Younger comes from two sources, in my eyes: One being absolute dedication – to his body, to his voice and to his mind. The other is Damon’s unsatiable curiosity about all things concerning life.
Icelanders are flabbergasted about how well he speaks Icelandic, he chuckles. Of course Damon Younger IS a true Icelander, he even has some fierce sounding Viking name, as all Icelanders do, but in regards to his family’s privacy he’d like to stick to “Damon Younger”, because – as the man at drama school put it at that time: “You won’t get hired in England unless we can spell how you’re called.” And boy, did he get hired – he even played Shakespeare on stage. In London. Isn’t that scary? “Nah, not so scary… I once got asked in Denmark if I was not afraid of acting in Danish seeing as I don’t speak the language. My reply was that I had never heard of an actor dying on a film set just by playing in a different language than he was used to. Now digging for people after an avalanche or being head of work on a Russian trawler in the north sea… scary.”
Damon Younger would know about the hard life on boats: “I sometimes work in the fish industry”, he says. “I like hard work, it keeps me disciplined, and can pay well so I can take periods off to follow my interests which have the uncanny knack of growing rather than shrinking.” Those interests include living on a boat, founding a family, creating and exhibiting art ( www.101image.com ), studying philosophy, and acting, of course. “It can be tough for an actor to either find a role or to have too much of one … after seeing what life has become for some of my more successful friends in the field I wasn’t sure if I wanted that amount of attention. Often I find less is more – I’m not in acting for fame”, he adds. “I like to study life and surround my self with people that are smarter than I… not a difficult thing to do when your me”, he says with a grin.
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