Sweden actor Alexander Skarsgard. Photo / AP
The star of Tarzan, Succession and now The Northman says good looks are a mixed blessing.
"That cemetery is where I'll end up one day," Alexander Skarsgard says, looking out to the yellow Katarina Church in Stockholm. With blue skies above it, the colours match his country's flag. He grew up streets away, but mostly lives in the US, where he made his name in Zoolander and The Legend of Tarzan, plus the television shows True Blood and Big Little Lies. Oh, and Succession. He left his country 20 years ago, to become the screen hunk who brings more to a role than big hunks tend to. Yet as we look out to the graveyard, it seems that you can take the Swede out of Sweden, but even the most successful ones come back in the end.
He is sprawled on the sofa, legs spread like cranes. This is how he has to sit. The man is 6ft 3in. We have met to talk about The Northman, a violent, strange, brilliant Viking blockbuster with Nicole Kidman as Skarsgard's difficult mother. But first a word on those Swedes because, for a country of just ten million people, they really do punch above their weight in the world.
Within minutes the actor mentions Abba, Vikings and Greta Thunberg. It is Swedish bingo. The tech pioneers Daniel Ek (Spotify creator) and Markus Persson (Minecraft) crop up. As does Skarsgard's famous actor father, Stellan. Only Max Martin, who has written 25 US No 1s, is missing from this full house of Swedish soft power.
Skarsgard cycled past Greta on his way to meet me; she was on a protest. "She's how we sell our country now," he reflects. "And I almost hit her with my bike." Skarsgard smiles. "Greta is like a modern-day Viking — and, like Greta, the Vikings refused to fly."
Skarsgard's childhood was very Swedish. When he was a boy he played next to Viking rune stones on the island of Oland, and was allowed to pick Viking middle names for his younger brothers. For the first he chose Adolf, before his folks said no. Instead he went with Orm — which means snake. "I was used to being the oldest child and had a lot of attention," he explains. "Then there was somebody cuter than me, so I called him snake." He gave his other brother the name of a god whose brains are smashed into the sky. Still, the runes were magical to him, inscribed with Vikings who went to far-flung places.
No wonder Skarsgard was picked for Succession. If you need television shorthand for somebody young and a match for a business behemoth like Logan Roy, make them Swedish. Skarsgard's Lukas Matsson is a rude revelation as the chief executive of the streaming platform GoJo, who may well have brought down the Roy media empire. The actor does not yet know if he is back for series four, but the word is that he will be.
The best scenes in series three were with Matsson and Logan Roy (Brian Cox) in the garden of an Italian villa. The men discuss takeovers until Logan begins a monologue about America . . .
"And Matsson drifts off," Skarsgard says, laughing. "He is bored. There are all these sycophants in Logan's life, including his kids — he is a demigod. So what is funny is when he talks about America, instead of going, 'Tell me more!' Matsson goes, 'He talks a lot. I don't really need him. He's old and kind of boring.'"
It is a great role. But Skarsgard did not always have it so easy. Born in 1976, he started acting at seven, before quitting at 13. He had found fame in a TV show, but it was tough to have people talk about who you are when you do not yet know yourself.
National service followed, and then six months at Leeds Met studying English and living with a drug dealer. "I basically just hung out and had fun." Then, seven years after he gave it up, he returned to acting.
"Dad was happy," Skarsgard says. His father also made it big abroad in everything from Good Will Hunting to Mamma Mia!. "He'd come home from set when I was young and I'd think, 'If he is having that much fun on a Monday morning, why am I against being an actor?'"
The visionary and bonkers Northman is his hardest role to date. Skarsgard is Amleth, a Viking prince avenging his father. In one extraordinary raid Skarsgard is half-naked, half-wolf, tripping, taking a chunk out of someone's throat. He is naked and bloody a lot. Think the superb and ghastly Belarusian war film Come and See meets the vivid horror of Midsommar. Yet still you won't be prepared for a nude Ethan Hawke barking like a dog. I am staggered, in an age of franchises, that this US$90 million, weird violent epic was made. "So am I," Skarsgard says.
Still, Amleth is exactly the sort of role that Skarsgard wants. A wish-fulfilment part that marries the Viking history that beguiled him as a boy with the challenging work that he did not get at the start of his career. After scoring a role in Ben Stiller's fashion comedy Zoolander in 2001, offers dried up. "I was left auditioning to play the boyfriend of a girl who gets killed in scene four of a low-budget horror movie," he says of Hollywood.
In Sweden he worked in films that barely paid enough to buy a ticket back to LA. That must have been depressing? "Absolutely," he says. "I was questioning why I was in the industry." It was not until 2008 that things changed, when The Wire's creator David Simon cast him in his Iraq war HBO series Generation Kill.
Charlize Theron once said that it is hard for an actor to be hot. "When meaty roles come through," she explained, "pretty people get turned away first." Did Skarsgard have that experience? "As a good looking blonde woman," he jokes, "I can relate." He pauses and tries out a few answers.
"I don't really know if that was the reason I wasn't getting roles," he explains eventually. "Starting out in Sweden, there was stuff about being tall and blond …" He laughs. "But most people here are tall and blond. Still, after my first job I was on a stupid 'sexy hunky hot list' and then people didn't take me seriously. If you want characters with depth but have been labelled 'a dude who takes his shirt off', you're not going to get those offers."
He finds much of his Hollywood life bizarre. He's dated a string of famous women including Alexa Chung and is a fixture on the gossip websites. But he's not on social media, will never google his name. "This industry is incredibly ridiculous," he says. "In meetings people are really insecure and eager to please. But it's a strict hierarchy. If people at the top say something is good, people fall in line. Also, menial trivial bullshit stuff becomes very important to people. As an actor the value placed on how important something is can become laughable to me." His real ambition is to have lots of kids. His twice-married father has eight. He wants nine.
Does he know people similar to his billionaire character on Succession? "A little — Stockholm's a hub for people who start ridiculously successful companies. A lot are programmers, not dudes who got the girl. They sit in the basement and drink Dr Pepper then, suddenly, like the Minecraft guy, outbid Beyoncé on a house in the Hollywood Hills. I like the idea of Matsson being in that rat race of the ultra-wealthy, because it never ends. I've been on yachts and seen owners glance at the yacht next door, because it's 5ft longer. It never ends, does it?"
Sure, but Skarsgard is an A-lister with access to great riches like his Succession role? "I live an incredibly privileged life," he admits. At 45 he has a reported worth of US$15 million. "I don't really have to work — I've made enough. I could retire, which is extraordinary. But I don't feel the need to broadcast that with expensive clothes or cars. That radiates insecurity. When you see somebody with a $1 million watch? That's peacocking. It can feel like they're overcompensating."
We wrap up. He has a meeting, but then texts me to go out for a beer. When he turns up, he arrives on a bike with a practical handlebar basket and we talk town planning until a couple of friends turn up, one with a tiny baby. It couldn't be more Swedish. He is wearing normcore chic like he has just walked out of a slightly more expensive H&M. He gets a few looks, sure, but he is at home here — and it is where he will end up.
The Northman opens in NZ cinemas on May 19.
Written by: Jonathan Dean
© The Times of London
Londoner Jennifer Abbott was known professionally as Sarah Steinberg.