
Age: 44
male
Johan Philip "Pilou" Asbæk (born 2 March 1982) is a Danish actor. He is best known for his roles as Euron Greyjoy on HBO's Game of Thrones, Pontius Pilate in Ben-Hur (2016), Bouchard in The Great Wall (2016), Batou in Ghost in the Shell (2017), Captain Wafner in Overlord (2018), Cyrus in Samaritan(2022), Gage in Uncharted (2022), and a troubled spin doctor Kasper Juul in the Danish TV political drama Borgen. He was among the recipients of the Shooting Stars Award at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival. On 10 May he was co-host of the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen, with Lise Rønne and Nikolaj Koppel. Some critics commented adversely on the obscure jokes shared by the presenters throughout the televised show.

The novel alternates between episodes featuring Benny, Stencil and other members of the Whole Sick Crew (including Profane's sidekick Pig Bodine) in 1956 (with a few minor flashbacks), and a generation-spanning plot that comprises Stencil's attempts to unravel the clues he believes will lead him to "V." (or to the various incarnations thereof). Each of these "Stencilised" chapters is set at a different moment of historical crisis; the framing narrative involving Stencil, "V.", and the journals of Stencil's British spy/diplomat father threads the sequences together. The novel's two storylines increasingly converge in the last chapters (the intersecting lines forming a V-shape, as it were), as Stencil hires Benny to travel with him to Malta.
