uiimageview - Haneke set Button Image in UITableView

Question

I got a button named "avatarImage" that should display the user's avatar

tried this:

func tableView(tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
//do other cell stuff....

    //does not present anything, but actually gets the image!
    cell.avatarImage.imageView!.contentMode = .ScaleAspectFill
    cell.avatarImage.imageView!.frame = cell.avatarImage.frame
    cell.avatarImage.imageView!.hnk_setImageFromURL(imgURL!)

    //let foo = UIImageView(frame:cell.frame)
    //self.view.addSubview(foo)
    //foo.hnk_setImageFromURL(imgURL!)
    //tried this for testing, works perfectly fine
}

also when adding a 'UIImageView' to the cell, it will be set correctly. Is there any issue that you can not target button.imageview? directly?

Any hints?