Alexej Manvelov Shirtless, Girlfriend, Gay or Straight? Aside from Matthew Goode, another actor who’s getting praises for his role in Dept. Q is Swedish actor Alexej Manvelov who’s playing a former Syrian cop who ends up as a refugee in Scotland.

Apparently, he was a construction worker before he decided to become an actor which gives him something in common with ex-construction hunks turned celebrities like Joe Manganiello, George Clooney, Harrison Ford (who was a carpenter), and our imaginary beau Matthew Noszka. Unfortunately, try as we might, we failed to find a photo of our Alexej in his construction attire, like Matthew’s in the preceding link, which would have been awesome. But we did find a pic of Alexej as an adorable kiddo:

For those of you who are wondering, the Dept. Q actor is part-Russian (via his mother) and part Kurdish/Iranian (via his dad). The Facebook blog, Nordic/Scandi FanFocus, has the details on our talented actor:

On his roots: “Alexej Alan Farhad Manvelov was born March 31st, 1982 in Moscow, Russia. His parents, both young linguistic students, met and fell in love whilst at university in Moscow. His father, Farhad, is Kurdish-Iranian, his mother, Kamilla, is Russian. His parents split up shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) with Farhad moving to Sweden.”

On how he ended up in Sweden: “In 1992 a change of Government in Russia led to widespread unrest. As Alexej explained in an interview with Asa Mittemot “an unofficial civil war”. Things were dangerous. His parents sat him down and made, what must have been an unbelievably hard decision for his mother. They decided, with their son’s agreement, to send him to live with his father in Sweden. He was 10 years old. At the time he thought “Sweden sounded exciting”. Alexej joined his new family (Farhad had a new relationship and Alexej had a baby half-sister) in Ljungsbro outside Linköping. He remained close to his mother with daily phone calls, summer holidays in Russia and visits with her in between but life in Sweden was far from the ideal they had hoped for. The dark-skinned boy faced a daily barrage of bullying and racial harassment at school.”

On how he became an actor: “Unsurprisingly, Alexej dropped out of High School with bad grades. All he wanted was to become an actor but he did a welding course which got him jobs in construction, especially as a sheet metal technician, all the while auditioning and chasing roles. He is completely self-taught with no formal acting training. He was turned down twice for stage school – and that was after he had made the film Tommy and had begun to work on Occupied!” Read the rest on Nordic Scandi Fanfocus.

Pretty inspiring story, no? Now he is an international star with a hit show on Netflix. Now, for the thirsty hos among us, here are some shirtless photos of our Swedish/Russian/Kurdish/Iranian actor, we grabbed the middle pic from his Instagram page where he goes by @manwelove.

Alexej Gay or Straight? Girlfriend or Boyfriend. He is straight. But he did play an LGBT character in an episode of the TV show Before We Die.

Nah, this girl chillin’ with him on the red carpet is not his girlfriend. She’s fellow actor Sandra Redlaff.

Alexej Manvelov Shirtless, Girlfriend, Gay or Straight. Last updated: June 12, 2025 at 8:55 am.