--- title: Michael Huisman: Game of Thrones and Age of Adaline Movie Stars description: The actor brings his 'Game of Thrones' smolder to 'The Age of Adaline' canonical: https://time.com/3832030/michael-huisman-game-of-thrones-age-of-adaline/ author: Daniel D'Addario article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-27T16:45:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T06:36:00.169Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Michael Huisman: Game of Thrones and Age of Adaline Movie Stars og:description: The actor brings his 'Game of Thrones' smolder to 'The Age of Adaline' og:url: https://time.com/3832030/michael-huisman-game-of-thrones-age-of-adaline/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt39e1d9466332e6f6/6987ed15cd6848e7de09db87/game-of-thrones1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Game-of-Thrones-S4-E7 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Michael Huisman: Game of Thrones and Age of Adaline Movie Stars twitter:description: The actor brings his 'Game of Thrones' smolder to 'The Age of Adaline' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt39e1d9466332e6f6/6987ed15cd6848e7de09db87/game-of-thrones1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Michiel Huisman Proves That _Game of Thrones_ is Changing the Industry  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Apr 27, 2015 4:45 PM CUT  HBO  by [Daniel D'Addario](/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Apr 27, 2015 4:45 PM CUT _The Age of Adaline_, a new romantic drama released Friday, is being sold on the strength of Blake Lively, an actress who’s been a familiar face and name for nearly a decade. For her co-star and love interest, though, the producers went with a star whose name most moviegoers likely couldn’t pronounce even if they knew it—though he might be as familiar as Lively. Michiel Huisman, the male lead in _The Age of Adaline_, is among the many actors being pushed to megafame by _Game of Thrones_. On HBO, the actor plays Daario, the lover of Daenerys; it’s not the most substantial role in all of Westeros, but one that’s helped make a Dutch performer a credible counterbalance to Lively onscreen. And it’s not just Huisman whose persona has gotten a boost from Sunday night’s biggest show: Natalie Dormer, the canny Margaery Tyrell, is now a fixture in the _Hunger Games_ universe, while Sophie Turner, the sensitive Sansa, is in the next _X-Men_ flick. That franchise also played home, in its 2014 installment, to Peter Dinklage, who after years of critical respect crossed the rubicon into stardom with his role as Tyrion. And Emilia Clarke, the mother of dragons herself, steps into the iconic role of Sarah Connor in the next _Terminator_ film. Among prestige dramas of the recent past, only _Thrones_ has managed to put so many people on the star track. What’s so special about it? Perhaps it’s the show’s extremeness. _Game of Thrones_ plays with a palette of special-effects and action sequences that equip more or less any of their actors to take their place in a Hollywood whose multiplex fare has only grown more baroque. A movie producer can assume an actor who’s been to Westeros can be believed as a mutant fighting for humanity, or as the unlikely ally of an Arnold Schwarzenegger-sized robot. And actors leave the show with little baggage in terms of growing over-associated with the specifics of their roles: Their characters are in such specific, strange situations that it’s impossible to extrapolate too much. (That is, Clarke will be believable in any movie even when she’s not the mother of dragons, because that’s hardly a character type that ever recurs.) But it’s not just the sets and premises that make _Game of Thrones_ a star factory. The show, more than any other on TV, plays with big, garish emotions, ones that feel suited to the biggest screen possible. On _Thrones_, Daario is a man with shifty motives who’s nonetheless devoted to his queen; Huisman’s character in _Adaline_ is, similarly, roguish and besotted with a mysterious, supernatural woman. (Daenerys, on _Game of Thrones_, walked through fire and didn’t die; Lively’s Adaline is a woman without the capacity to age.) It’s little wonder the stars of, say, _Mad Men_ or of _Breaking Bad_ have found comparably less traction onscreen: Their inner lives are those of humans, completely incongruent with the sort of simple, broad-brush characterizations that, these days, get blown up onto a movie screen. Jon Hamm carries a lot of baggage from his role on _Mad Men_, and part of that baggage is simply that viewers associate him with subtlety and complication. Huisman is very good in _Adaline_, but the movie requires him to do little more than smolder in Lively’s direction—much as Dinklage, for example, has had to be stagily sneaky in both _Thrones_ and _X-Men_. As a conduit to fame, _Game of Thrones_ pre-does the movie industry’s work for it, turning actors into archetypes. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3832030/michael-huisman-game-of-thrones-age-of-adaline/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3832030/michael-huisman-game-of-thrones-age-of-adaline/"},"headline":"Michiel Huisman Proves That Game of Thrones is Changing the Industry","datePublished":"2015-04-27T16:45:40.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T06:36:00.169Z","description":"The actor brings his Game of Thrones smolder to The Age of Adaline","url":"https://time.com/3832030/michael-huisman-game-of-thrones-age-of-adaline/","keywords":["Television","game of thrones","movies","Terminator","emilia clarke","peter dinklage"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt39e1d9466332e6f6/6987ed15cd6848e7de09db87/game-of-thrones1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel D'Addario","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt39e1d9466332e6f6/6987ed15cd6848e7de09db87/game-of-thrones1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Game-of-Thrones-S4-E7","caption":"","creditText":"HBO","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3832030/michael-huisman-game-of-thrones-age-of-adaline/","name":"Michiel Huisman Proves That Game of Thrones is Changing the Industry"}}]}] ```