Kjell Nilsson (actor)

Kjell Nilsson
Kjell Nilsson
Born	19 December 1949 (age 74); Gothenburg, Västra Götalands län, Sweden

Kjell Nilsson (born 19 December 1949) is a Swedish olympic-class weight lifter and actor. His best known role is his 1981 portrayal of "Lord Humungus", the leader of the marauding wasteland gang in Mad Max 2.

Life and career[edit]

Nilsson was a former olympic-class weight lifter who was born in Gothenburg, Sweden. He moved to Australia in 1980 to train Swedish athletes for the Moscow Olympics.^[1] In Australia, he met actress Kate Ferguson, and they married in Sweden. She persuaded him to return to Australia and to look for work in the Australian film industry.

In the 1981 post-apocalyptic science fiction action film Mad Max 2 (also known as Mad Max: The Road Warrior), he played the main antagonist "Lord Humungus", the leader of a gang of marauders that besiege a settler compound in the Australian wastelands. He leads a rag-tag band of biker-berserkers, and he gives speeches to the settlers exhorting them to surrender, while utilizing psychological warfare. Time magazine's Richard Corliss stated that in Nilsson's portrayal, "malevolence courses through his huge pectorals, [and] pulses visibly under his bald, sutured scalp."^[2]

A year later, he appeared in The Pirate Movie (1982), a musical and comedy film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Christopher Atkins and Kristy McNichol. In 1984, he had a role in the TV movie Man of Letters, and in 1987, he played the role of a nurse in The Edge of Power.