Name: Goran Visnjic
Age: 27 (Birthday is September 9th, 1972)
Height: 6'4"
Lives in: Croatia, Los Angeles & Newyork
People Weekly; November 16, 1998; pg 138There is heroism hovering behind Goran Visnjic's darkly exotic good looks. When war broke out in his native Croatia in 1991, the Sibenik-born actor had just finished his required stint in the army, but he voluntary stayed on for three more months. "When somebody is attacking your hometown and you're just sitting in the basement, you feel really useless," says Visnjic, 26. "I felt I had to do it to defend my country."
Now the 6'4" Visnjic has only to defend himself against the bevy of young women who discovered him as Nicole Kidman's cowboy-booted boyfriend in Practical Magic. "Women go crazy for him," says Magic costar Aidan Quinn. "At the premiere, women were saying, ‘Oh my God, who is that?'" Visnjic, who also had a small role in 1997's Welcome to Sarajevo, was dubbed the Tom Cruise of Croatia by Vogue in December. He now splits his time between rental apartments in Croatia, L.A. and New York City. Engaged to a Croatian sculptor, he prefers to shrug off all the breathless hoopla about his Heathcliffian visage. "Lots of people want to be movie stars," Visnjic says. "But they don't realize that to be a celebrity is not that beautiful if you can't go to the store to buy toothpaste."
Vogue; December 1998; pg 174
Exactly seventeen minutes into the Cannes premiere of Welcome to Sarajevo, agents in the dark theater traded silent snarls. Not because Woody Harrelson- playing journalist as superhero- had barely saved a Bosnian's life, or because a bridal party had been pummeled, or because the grainy scenes brought the grit of the war up so close. It was because the camera had closed in on the swarthy presence of the film's driver, and Hollywood was busy discovering a guy named Goran.
What the battling giants from ICM and CAA didn't know was that on the other side of the Atlantic and across seven time zones, mention the name Goran Visnjic and girls in Zagreb giggle a little. Open the Croatian News and there's word of his latest stage feat. Stroll beside him down the stony streets of Dubrovnik, and he draws more than a few glances.
Hollywood had landed, quite by accident, the Tom Cruise of Croatia.
"No, no, no. It's nothing like that here," demurs Visnjic (pronounced "viz-nee-ish"), the Yugoslavian-born actor, who in Cannes received a crash course in things like blockbusters and buzz. While he wasn't among the mauled, his leading-man presence hardly went unnoticed. At six-foot-four, Visnjic, 25, gives off a dusky blend of Cary Grant and Daniel Day-Lewis, Eastern European-style.
"In a film, everything is pictures and images," he says when forced to acknowledge the appearance issue. "So, after a good performance, a good face is a very good thing. And maybe a bad thing sometimes. I don't want to be in the clouds, if you know what I mean." If Visnjic has made a name for himself, it's through pure determination and talent.
"My success in Croatia goes after my role in Hamlet," he says.
Growing up in a small town off the Adriatic Sea- on a steady diet of American movies- Visnjic decided early on that he wanted to be an actor, first performing with local theater groups and then entering the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. Two years into his studies, at the age of 21, he auditioned for the prestigious Dubrovnik Summer Festival's staging of Hamlet. Outperforming his older, more experiences competitors, he was cast as the lead.
"It's very difficult to play Hamlet, especially when you're 21," says Visnjic of the role he's returned to play every summer since. "It's so big. And I play with the best actress in Croatia." The production, staged among Dubrovnik's fourteenth-century fortress, has received rave reviews, with Visnjic's own performance earning him three national Best Actor awards, most recently in Orlando, the Croatian equivalent of the Tony.
He starred in three Croatian movies and had a bit part in The Peacemaker when a Western film showed up to cast a local in a supporting role in Welcome to Sarajevo , a graphic and grabbing tale about foreign correspondents in wartime Bosnia. "We saw all the actors in Sarajevo. There were only about fifteen left," says director Michael Winterbottom, whose previous film, Jude, showed at the Director's Fortnight in Cannes last year. The crew members broadened their search to Croatia and came across Visnjic, who was cast as Risto, the journalist's driver. Says Winterbottom, "Risto's character really represents Sarajevo."
Information From a Pratical Magic Site
Goran Visnjic (Jimmy) made his American motion picture debut in the critically acclaimed drama "Welcome to Sarajevo." Visnjic gained popularity in his native Croatia when, at the age of 21, he was cast as Hamlet in the prestigious Dubrovnik Summer Festival’s staging of Shakespeare’s play. The production received rave reviews, with Visnjic’s own performance earning him three national Best Actor awards, including the Orlando (the Croatian equivalent of a Tony). He has starred in three Croatian movies since that time and had a featured role in "The Peacemaker," opposite George Clooney and Nicole Kidman.
His other theater credits include "les Fourberies de Scapin," "l’Ecole des femmes," "Miss Julie," "Ivanov," "The Brothers Karamazov" and "le Baruffe chiozotte."
Visnjic grew up in a small town off the Adriatic Sea, where he decided early on that he wanted to be an actor. He first performed in local theater groups and then entered the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb.
Croatian actor Goran Visnjic lands new role on NBC's `ER': Taken from http://www.ohio.com/justgo/tv/docs/006928.htm, which is from some sort of Ohio Entertainment Guide.
Goran Visnjic (Practical Magic) will join NBC's ER next season. The producers of the TV drama are creating a role for the Croatian-born Visnjic, who is expected to appear in at least 19 episodes next season. He first gained critical attention for his role in Miramax's Welcome to Sarajevo, in which he played the translator and driver for Woody Harrelson's character. Last year, he joined Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic. Visnjic played Jimmy, Gillian's (Kidman) beau gone bad.
This is from the ER site:
Goran Visnjic, who joins the cast of NBC’s "ER" in its sixth season playing the role of Dr. Luka Kovac, a Croatian survivor of the Bosnian War, brings a knowledge about working with "ER" stars to the series. He had a featured role in the film "The Peacemaker," opposite former "ER" star George Clooney.
Visnjic grew up in a small town in his native Croatia off the Adriatic Sea, where he decided at an early age that he wanted to be an actor. He first performed in local theater groups and then entered the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. He gained popularity in Croatia when, at the age of 21, he was cast as Hamlet in the prestigious Dubrovnik Summer Festival’s staging of Shakespeare’s play. The production received rave reviews, with Visnjic’s own performance earning him three national Best Actor awards, including the Orlando (the Croatian equivalent of a Tony).
His additional theater credits include "Les Fourberies de Scapin," "L’Ecole des Femmes," "Miss Julie," "Ivanov," "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Le Baruffe Chiozotte."
Visnjic has starred in three Croatian feature films, and he made his American motion picture debut in the critically acclaimed drama, "Welcome to Sarajevo."
In his leisure time, Visnjic enjoys fencing, swimming and diving. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Ivana, and his birthday is September 9.
People Weekly; December 6th 1999; Page 101-102
Reporting for rounds as hunky pediatrician Luka Kovac on the Burbank set of NBC's ER last summer, Goran Visnjic didn't waste a heartbeat. "He immediately wanted to go to the emergency room," says Neal Baer, a pediatrician who serves as the show's coexecutive producer. "We taught him how to suture because he had a scene where he had to suture a boy." But it was not the actor's first exposure to medical procedures. "I was [observing] in the E.R. in Zagreb, first," he told the Gannett News Service last month. "I did my homework in Croatia," which happens to be where Visnjic (pronounced VISH-nick), 27, grew up.
All that preparation has paid off. In his first few weeks on the hit series, Kovac not only stitched up that kid with aplomb, he goaded a wife beater into assaulting him so the guy would wind up in the psych ward; pretending to be a priest to comfort a dying patient; and, not least, has made a smitten nurse, Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies), and millions of female fans forget, at least temporarily, about the actor the broodingly handsome, 6'4" Visnjic replaced: George Clooney.
"Women really love him," reports Baer. "He walked onto that show a filled a void," agrees Risa Bramon Garcia, who cast Visnjic in a bit part in 1997's The Peacemaker, a thriller that, coincidentally, starred George Clooney. "I'm a lucky girl!" says Margulies, who describes her new costar as "diligent and funny." However, she adds, "I have never seen Goran as filling in George Clooney's shoes. Goran fills in his own shoes quite nicely."
And quite modestly, "I cannot see myself on the screen, and I cannot hear my voice," Visnjic told PEOPLE (as our Sexiest Import) last year after viewing one of his films. "I feel it's awful." Back home in Croatia, "there are no stars," explains the classically trained actor. "No one is driving around in a black limo. In Dubrovnik, where I've done Hamlet for six years, they're like ‘Oh, Goran's in town again. Hi Goran.'"
Born in the small village of Sibenik on the Adriatic coast, Visnjic, the younger of two sons of a saleswoman and her bus driver husband, plunged into acting at age 9. "A guy from the [local] amateur theater asked my teacher who was good at reading stories, and she said me," he recalls. He continued to perform through school, then at 18, entered the army for a year's required service, training as a paratrooper.
In 1991, as his tour of duty ended, war broke out between Croatia and neighbouring Serbia. Visnjic voluntarily stayed on for three more months of combat. "I felt I had to do it to defend my country," he says, modestly adding, "that's normal." After his acceptance into Zagreb's Academy of Dramatic Arts, he was allowed to leave the army. His older brother, now 29 and a salesman, eagerly took his place. (Croatians discourage siblings from serving at the same time.) "He couldn't wait until I went out," says Visnjic.
The rising thespian went on to make several Croatian-language movies before being discovered in Welcome to Sarajevo, an acclaimed 1997 feature about the Serbo-Croatian war. At the film's premiere he met actor-director Griffin Dunne, who asked him to audition for Practical Magic, a 1998 supernatural comedy. The role of Nicole Kidman's Texas redneck boyfriend was rewritten for Visnjic, who played him as an Eastern European who idolizes American cowboys. "It was a physically demanding role," says Dunne, "because for two weeks he had to pretend to be dead! He had to lie on a table with needles in his eyes and candle wax dripping on him."
Since then the very animated Visnjic has resisted the urge to go Hollywood. No starlets for him. He has settled in L.A. with his Croatian wife, Ivana, a sculptor. And he remans in awe of the America beyond that glittering coast. "The Grand Canyon is like, who digged such a huge hole? It's too big for my mind," he said last year. "In Croatia I could walk," he added. "Here, everything is highway. You could just put a stone on the gas pedal and say, ‘Okay I'll see you there.'"
