Sonny Ola Rapace Jawo (; né Pär Ola Norell; born 3 December 1971) is a Swedish actor best known for playing Patrice in the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall. Early life Ola Rapace was born on the 3rd of December 1971 in Tyresö, a suburb southeast of Stockholm, Sweden and named Pär Ola Norell. Both parents were academics. He grew up mainly in Vallentuna, a middle-class suburb north of Stockholm. When he was one year old, his parents separated, and he was raised by his father. He grew up playing football and listening to heavy metal. While studying philosophy at the University of Montpellier in France, he discovered acting. Career His first screen role was in Lukas Moodysson's film Together, a bittersweet comedy about hippie-socialist values set in a Stockholm homeshare commune. The film won several awards at international film festivals, including the Paris Film Festival Special Jury Prize, and Philadelphia Film Festival Jury Award. Rapace's big breakthrough came with the popular TV series Tusenbröder about a group of handymen who become involved with organised crime. Immediately followed the role as Stefan Lindman in Wallander, which was based on Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander books. He continued with several police and crime-related TV series, including portraying Daniel Nordström in the Danish police TV show Anna Pihl, Crimes of Passion, a crime drama set in 1950's rural Sweden, Farang about a Scandinavian ex-convict living in Thailand and Hassel, an updated dark and gritty cop show based on a classic series of books from the '70s and '80s. This was a cop show he also executive produced, and Section Zéro, a French science fiction influenced cop drama. While he has worked on many cop shows, Rapace has been very critical of the genre. In 2012 he told Cafe Magazine: "All the Wallander and Beck films are worthless. There is no credibility, it does not work to investigate thousands of murders in Ystad year after year. In the end it becomes a joke, and the quality becomes so low that one has no other option but to shut down the production". His first English-language film was the 2004 independent movie Rancid starring Matthew Settle (from Band of Brothers and Gossip Girl). A much bigger project was the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall, where he portrayed the hitman "Patrice". Rapace lived in Paris from 2015-2020 and has since worked on Swedish, French and international projects.