Mikko Niskanen

Mikko Niskanen was a Finnish film director and actor. He was born in Äänekoski, Central Finland in 1929. He was the third of six children, and his father worked as a timber barge pilot. His mother too had a job outside the home, so the children often spent summers with their grandmother in Viitasaari.

At the age of 13, Mikko Niskanen started working in timber felling and floating. Two years later he enrolled in a vocational school in Jyväskylä to become a car mechanic. He took a serious interest in amateur theatre and was accepted to study at the Finnish Theatre Academy in Helsinki from 1947 until 1950. He then acted in Jyväskylä and Kuopio theatres until 1954 when he landed an actor's job at the film studios of Suomen Filmiteollisuus in Helsinki. One of his first film roles was in Edvin Laine's The Unknown Soldier (1955). Between 1958 and 1961 Niskanen studied at the Moscow Film School in the Soviet Union.