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Visnjic and His Journey to Stardom

Goran Visnjic is an American actor with European roots. He was born in a small town in Croatia, where at the age of 9 he makes his first steps on the acting stage. After graduating from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, he gets noticed by American producers and starts receiving invitations for Hollywood. In 1997 he lands a role in “Welcome to Sarajevo”, a movie directed by Michael Winterbottom, followed by a role in “The Peacemaker” where he plays alongside George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. In 1999 he joined the cast of “ER” as Dr. Luka Kovac, the role that would change his life and launch his career to stardom. In 2001 he decides to do something outside the silver screen and appears in the movie “The Deep End”, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. In 2016, he appears as the main villain in the series 'Timeless' (estimated date of the final episode is 20 December), which have become a great success.



Most people dream of becoming famous movie stars, but they don’t realize that being a celebrity has a lot of downsides. Before living in America, Goran Visnjic had an acting career back home, with an array of successful roles. But as he explains, being famous in America and in Croatia is beyond comparison, and he had to learn that lesson at a quite young age. Namely, at the age of 21, while he was playing Hamlet in Zagreb’s National Theater, Goran Visnjic received the offer of his lifetime to play “In Welcome to Sarajevo”, which opened him the doors to the American market. The film was premiered in both New York and Los Angeles. His current agent saw his performance and decided to contact him and offered him to directly try his luck in the United States.

For Goran Visnjic America truly was the land of opportunity. There as he says, everybody is entitled to the same rights, and everyone has equal chances of making it. Each and every one of his colleagues, same as him, had to fight alone, and invest a lot of time and effort into their careers. The only drawback for him was the language issue, because English is not his native language and he had to work even that much harder to overcome the language barrier. If you are a god actor and a professional, people will treat you with respect, regardless whether you are an American or just an emerging actor from an Eastern European country.

Currently, Visnjic is starting a new project. He will be part of the drama Fatima, along with Harvey Keitel. The filming location of this drama will be Lisbon, Portugal.

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