If you are someone of a certain age, most likely you'd have heard
of LazyTown when you were growing up.
I was one of those young children who watched LazyTown, and I
remember enjoying it a lot. Stefan Karl Stefansson played the main antagonist
of the show, Robbie Rotten, and it was fun to watch the plans he'd try to make
the town lazy. In many ways, Stefansson was the standout star of the show,
despite being labeled a villain, and without him the show wouldn't have stood
out as much as it did for me. Of course, that wasn't the only thing Stefansson
did.
Stefan Karl Stefansson
was born in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland, on July 10, 1975. He began his career at
the age of 19, as a puppeteer for television, while he was studying acting at
the Drama Academy of Iceland. He became a very well-respected actor, appearing
in plays (including those by Anton Chekhov) and Icelandic TV shows. However, his
role as the witty, fun villain Robbie Rotten on LazyTown brought
him into the mainstream and became his most notable role. He repeated this
archetype when he played the title character of the adapted musical How
the Grinch Stole Christmas from 2008 to 2015.
Sadly, he was diagnosed
with aggressive bile duct cancer in October 2016. After this diagnosis, he achieved
meme status when his song "We Are Number One" from LazyTown, which was part of his
GoFundMe campaign, got millions of hits, returning him to the pop culture of
the time. He eventually beat his original diagnosis, and then beat cancer again
after it metastasized a second time. However, in February 2018, it was
announced that his cancer had become inoperable, and he closed his social-media
accounts. He died too soon, at the young age of 43, and became a hit for Allen
Kirshner, Cheesecake 1, Deceased Hose, Ed V., Fisher, Gerard Tierney, me (Joey
Russ), Keister Button, Morlock, Pan Breed, TJS, and Toast.
--Joey Russ
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