The New Regime: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has been a hair's breadth from becoming a household name for longer than seems justifiable. He starred in two Fox series that didn't catch-as a 400-year-old homicide detective in New Amsterdam, which had an eight-episode run, and as the lead in the cult favorite sci-fi pilot, Virtuality, which was co-written by Ronald Moore (Battlestar Galactica) and directed by Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights)—but with his front-and-center role as the incestuous, gold-plated Jaime Lannister on HBO's Game of Thrones, he's finally beginning to take his rightful place in the spotlight. In the fantastic 2011 Norwegian film Headhunters, he played a revenge-seeking CEO who put his nemesis through a world of shit, literally. (Mark Wahlberg is planning a stateside remake of the film, and Nikolaj jokes about how busy the actor/producer is, saying, "He does catering on Game of Thrones.") When asked about his lead role opposite Jessica Chastain in the upcoming Guillermo del Toro-produced supernatural thriller Mama, he instantly sings the first line of "Bohemian Rhapsody."

"I can't watch movies like that," he says. "They freak me out." In an appealing confession for someone so tall (6' 2") and square-jawed, he says, "The idea of ghosts scares the shit out of me," adding that he even had trouble watching the rough cut of the film. "I had to turn the sound off." In 2013 he'll appear alongside Tom Cruise and Olga Kurylenko as a battle-hardened weapons expert in the big-budget sci-fi epic, Oblivion, and opposite Juliette Binoche in A Thousand Times Goodnight.

When prodded for hints about season three of Game of Thrones, which premieres in March, he's appropriately tight-lipped. He also admits to not reading the books until after he gets the scripts.

"I don't want to get attached to anything too specific with the character because they make changes for the show," he says. "I don't want to start questioning their decisions. After all, they got us this far."