Krister Henriksson, interview: from Wallander to the West End Henriksson had never read the Wallander novels. So he sent me the books, and when I read them, I thought, 'Why haven't they asked me before? I recognised my life. Mankell and Henriksson are near-contemporaries, born in 1948 and 1946 respectively, "and I think [the Wallander novels] are very much about a man who was born at that time." Like Wallander, Henriksson says that devotion to his work cost him his first marriage. And like his fictional alter ego, who longed to be an opera impresario, he flirted with an alternative profession, medicine. Henriksson grew up in the coastal village of Grisslehamn, where his father was a fisherman. In the summer, tourists from Stockholm would visit: "They were highly educated, spoke a different language from our dialect, had a different way of doing things. They made you lose confidence in yourself. But on the other hand, they made you long for something else. They talked about books. There were no books in my home. Education was his escape route from Grisslehamn. He began studying to be a doctor, but a first encounter with the theatre while doing military service changed his mind. He auditioned for drama school and by 27 was playing the lead in Ibsen's Peer Gynt at the Stockholm City Theatre. But he was struck with stage fright so incapacitating that he fainted on stage. A doctor in the audience treated him, "And it was strange, but I was rather glad it had happened. I had had the opportunity to try acting, but this meant that I should become a doctor. So I decided to go back [to medical school]. While waiting to resume his studies, he worked in a hospital, where one of his patients was a businessman suffering from terminal cancer. For half a year, I sat and talked to him. One day he said, 'Krister, I'm going to die soon, so I'll say goodbye. But I'll tell you something. I like your stories. I feel there's an actor in you. Give it another try. So I called my agent, and said, 'Get me a little part. Just a few lines. He got me a few lines in a Chekhov play. And I liked saying those few lines, so I said, 'Can I have more lines?" " It was while filming the first series of Wallander that he came up with the project that will bring him to the West End next spring, a one-man stage adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg's haunting 1905 philosophical novel, Doktor Glas, which tells the story of an angst-ridden fin-de-siècle physician who falls tragically in love with one of his patients. The novel, a beloved classic in Sweden, has just been reissued in an elegant English translation with an introduction by Margaret Atwood. It's very easy, when you're filming, to end up in the bar, so I thought I had to find something else to do in the evenings. I'm not interested in crosswords or knitting. So what could I do? Then I remembered that there was a very famous actor called Allan Edwall , who was my idol. He did a monologue based on Doktor Glas. When I was 35 and he was the age I am now, I saw the play and went to see him afterwards. As I was leaving, he said, 'Krister, I think you will do that part some day in the future. So I thought, 'Well, now I have something to do in the evenings. It is such a beautiful text, and I planned to do five performances. My friends said, 'That many?" " But the reviews glittered with superlatives and the play was a hit. He took it on tour, then transferred to the National Theatre in Stockholm. An English actress, Victoria Jeffrey, saw the show and became convinced that it would do well in London, where it opens next April, in Swedish with surtitles. "It's a fantastic thing, for a Scandinavian actor to be playing in the West End," says Henriksson. However it turns out, the fact they've invited me is a huge success. Now his relationship with Wallander is almost at an end: "I said to Henning, 'You must save my life. You have to do something with Kurt Wallander so that we can't shoot any more. So he wrote that final book, The Troubled Man, and he gave Wallander Alzheimer's. But it has been a wonderful role, and I'll miss him. As for life after Wallander: "I'm 65. I've done my career and it's time for me to do other things that challenge me. I've thought of doing stand-up comedy, telling everything about my life. To be brave on stage. I love the idea. Doktor Glas" runs at the Wyndhams Theatre from April 16 to May 11, 2013. Priority booking for Telegraph readers opens tomorrow until September 16. For tickets call 0844 871 2118 or visit www.telegraph.co.uk/boxoffice