Åke Lindman

Åke Lindman played full-back for Helsingfors IFK throughout his football career and won the Finnish championships with the club in both 1947 and 1959. He played 26 times for the Finnish national team including their brief Olympic appearance and several FIFA World Cup qualifying games. He turned down a chance to pursue a professional football career in England because of his burgeoning career as an actor.

Having made his movie debut in 1949 he had a fifty year career as an actor, writer and director and became one of the famous figures in Finnish cinema and television. In 1955 he starred in the epic “Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier)”, a war drama that became the most successful film in the history of Finland. Lindman was awarded a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to Finnish cinema in 2008.