Juliette Binoche

Nicolaj Coster-Waldau has come a long way to become the finest sword in all of Westeros, playing Jaime Lannister in the HBO medieval fantasy series Game of Thrones and gracing the cover of the May issue of Men's Health. Off-screen he speaks with the slightest of accents ("usually" comes out yew-shwelly ), and he carries himself with a hint of old-world formality. Except for those clues, you wouldn't suspect that he spent his childhood  in the village of Tybjerg, in Denmark, home to exactly 40 people. A talented athlete, he had early dreams of glory on the fodbold field. Between schoolwork and practice, however, he was devising an even more audacious plan. "I always wanted to be an actor, but I just never told anyone," he laughs. "I had this superstition that if I said it out loud, it wouldn't come true." (Make 2013 the year you hit your career goals with these 30 tips to soar ahead in the workplace .) As a teenager, Coster-Waldau, now 42, recalls being entranced with the layered perfor...

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