New Alex Interview with The Times Magazine (November 10, 2018)! Alexander SkarsgĂ„rd on being single, wanting to marry a Brit, Big Little Lies and the BBCâs new The Little Drummer Girl
He loves Leeds, pubs and Steve Coogan. Helena de Bertodano meets the Scandi star of John le CarrĂ©âs latest hit TV thriller
In the first episode of the BBC drama series The Little Drummer Girl, Gadi Becker, played by Alexander SkarsgĂ„rd , is described as âan international man of mysteryâ. The same might be said of SkarsgĂ„rd himself. He is a hard man to pin down. It takes weeks to arrange a meeting with him, across continents and time zones â the location switching from New York to Stockholm to Los Angeles, then Toronto. Even en route to Toronto, I have no idea when or where â or, to be honest, if â we will meet. The next day, I receive my instructions: come to the Ritz-Carlton hotel at 11am. As soon as that is tied down, the location and time change. Now itâs 11.15 at the Shangri-La Hotel, where a private dining room has been reserved: âTake the elevator to the ground floor, turn right and there will be a host desk. The reservation is booked under the name âAndrew Kerrâ.â
As I wait alone in the room, the minutes ticking by, I idly google âAndrew Kerrâ, just in case he shows up instead. A photograph of a laughing red-faced man with sweeping white hair â the co-founder of the Glastonbury festival â fills the screen. But he died in 2014. Noon comes and goes. The walls are mirrored glass, so I canât see the corridor outside. Then, just when I have given up all hope, one of the mirrored panels opens and a tall man, dressed from head to toe in black, lopes in, black sunglasses covering his eyes. âHi, Iâm Alex,â he says, removing the glasses to reveal ice-blue, tired eyes. He apologises profusely for being late â he is too nice to say so, but none of the uncertainty is his fault. He has no control over his Toronto Film Festival schedule, which is managed by a team of publicists and includes back-to-back screenings, conferences and panels. âThis week is killing me,â he sighs, pulling out a chair. He is too tall to fit his knees under the table so he sits sideways, legs flung out in front of him, pouring himself a cup of black tea from a dainty china pot.
The Little Drummer Girl is a six-part television adaptation of John le CarrĂ©âs espionage novel, produced by the same team that created the excellent The Night Manager. SkarsgĂ„rd , 42, plays a mysterious Mossad agent who entices a young English actress called Charlie, played by Florence Pugh, to help him undermine a Palestinian terror network. For the role he drew on his own experience in the Swedish military. âYou quickly assess a situation and learn how to navigate it.â
The director of the series, Park Chan-wook, best known for the notorious revenge thriller Oldboy, has said of SkarsgĂ„rdâs role as Becker, âTo play an enigmatic man who hides his true feelings deep inside, I couldnât think of a more fitting actor.â
Few actors have played a wider range of characters than SkarsgĂ„rd . He kicked off his career in Zoolander as a vacuous male model. âDid you ever think,â asks Ben Stiller peevishly of his character, Meekus, âthat thereâs maybe more to life than being really, really, really ridiculously good-looking?â
It was SkarsgĂ„rdâs first Hollywood movie and it seems he has been trying to formulate an answer ever since, often running in the opposite direction to make himself as unattractive as possible â not easy for a 6ft 4in, blue-eyed blond Swede who is absurdly handsome even in Scandinavian terms. In Big Little Lies, the HBO series that won him both a Golden Globe and an Emmy, his expression is often one of twisted rage as he beats up his wife, played by Nicole Kidman. In The Diary of a Teenage Girl, he plays a moustached paedophile; in Hold the Dark, a recently released Netflix movie, he wears a sinister wolf mask as he wreaks murderous mayhem on a small Alaska town.
Part of a Swedish acting dynasty, SkarsgĂ„rd is the eldest of eight siblings, some of whom â Gustaf, Bill and Valter â act too. His father, Stellan SkarsgĂ„rd , stars in Lars von Trier movies and is one of the trio of fathers in Mamma Mia!. Although well established as an actor for the past decade, Alexander SkarsgĂ„rd does not live a movie-star lifestyle. Until recently, he did not even have a place to live. âFor the past three years I havenât had a home. Just a suitcase with the bare essentials.â
So he has been travelling from one film set to another, then returning to Stockholm to sleep on his fatherâs futon. âI stay in their gaming room,â says SkarsgĂ„rd , speaking without a hint of a Swedish accent. âHe has a six-year-old and a nine-year-old [Alexanderâs half brothers from his fatherâs second marriage] so at seven in the morning the kids come in and sit on my head and play video games.â Recently, however, he has bought flats in both New York and Stockholm, although has spent hardly any time in either.
SkarsgĂ„rd describes his upbringing as bohemian, living in a large apartment with his cousins above and his grandparents over the road. Every night there would be big raucous dinners at home with extended family and his parentsâ hippy and anarchist friends. SkarsgĂ„rd was embarrassed by his extrovert father. âHe wasnât like my friendsâ dads, the archetypal Swedish businessmen. I wanted him to wear a grey suit and go to the office.â What did he wear? âKaftans. Or nothing. Heâd just walk around naked with a glass of wine. Heâs an extraordinary cook. I think heâs more passionate about cooking than acting. So heâd cook and hang out and be social and lovely â everything I appreciate today, but at the time I was just, âBe normal, dude.â â
âItâs always fun to embarrass your children,â says his father with relish, speaking by phone later from his Stockholm home, which sounds like merry chaos with his two youngest sons shrieking in the background. âNow Alex has become like me. Iâm very pleased when he goes to a premiere in drag or when he tells everybody on the Conan show that I have a small penis. That makes me proud.â
Like his father, the younger SkarsgĂ„rd has an off-kilter sense of humour. Although he doesnât really engage with social media, he has an account under the pseudonym @rexdanger (âDanger is my maiden nameâ), where he posts mysterious photographs: a strapless thong; a hairy man smoking a pipe with the caption, âHappy Motherâs Dayâ.
Growing up, SkarsgĂ„rd spent a lot of time at the theatre. âMost of my childhood memories are backstage when my father was working with Ingmar Bergman. I didnât care about him; he was just an old man reading Strindberg lines. But I loved being in the catacombs where they had all the prosthetics and wigs. The make-up artist would try everything on me.â
Inevitably, SkarsgĂ„rd was drawn into acting. âIt was haphazard. Once, Allan Edwall, who was a formidable actor and film-maker in Sweden, needed a seven-year-old kid for his film and he was over at our place. I happened to be seven and he was like, âHey do you want to be in my movie?â I was like, âYeah, sure.â â
His father, who was in the film as well, says, âIt was obvious Alex had a talent. He had a very vulnerable, open face, which he still has. Even when he plays this awful character in Big Little Lies, you see a streak of vulnerability that makes him â even as a monster â human.â
But when he played the lead role aged 13 in another Swedish movie, SkarsgĂ„rd struggled with the ensuing attention. Girls would be waiting outside his home for autographs. âIt made me very uncomfortable. So I quit.â
He finished school, and then â in a bid to show how different he was from his pacifist parents â enlisted in the Swedish navy for 18 months, joining an antiterrorism unit. Then came another strange move: he went to Leeds to study English, deliberately avoiding London âbecause all Swedes go to London: itâs an adventure, but a safe adventureâ. SkarsgĂ„rd doesnât do safe adventures. He loved Leeds, embracing the pub culture, becoming a passionate Leeds United supporter and soaking up British comedy, especially Alan Partridge/Steve Coogan â still his idol. He lived in an unheated basement flat âlike a bomb shelterâ, sharing a bathroom with two dodgy men. âOne looked like the killer from Twin Peaks â he had long grey hair and screamed at himself â and the other was a drug dealer who fried fish in his room.â
Still uncertain about his future, SkarsgĂ„rd visited his father, who was working in Los Angeles, and on a whim auditioned for Zoolander. Completely unprepared, he turned up in flip-flops, met Ben Stiller, read a couple of lines and landed the role. When he moved later to LA to pursue an acting career, having decided it was the only thing he was any good at, he found it much harder than he had thought. âI was the bottom of the barrel.â
For years he tried to get a foothold, with very limited success, and was on the verge of going home. âI was auditioning for a horror movie to play the boyfriend who gets eaten by the monster in the third scene. I thought, âWhat is the point?â I donât want to do this and itâs not like Iâm even being offered it; I have to chase after it. I was only doing it to please my agents.â
Then, just before his visa ran out, his luck changed. He was offered the role of Sergeant Brad âIcemanâ Colbert in the Iraq War miniseries Generation Kill. Thirty-six hours later he was on a plane to Namibia, where he filmed for seven months in the desert. âThat changed everything,â he says. True Blood â the fantasy horror television series that made his name, albeit as a Viking vampire â followed, then he was asked to play Lady Gagaâs boyfriend in her 2009 music video Paparazzi, which has had more than 225 million views. âI was completely oblivious to who she was,â says SkarsgĂ„rd . âBut I knew Jonas [Akerlund, the director], and he told me his idea for the music video. As far as love stories go [he throws Lady Gaga off a balcony; she comes back and poisons him], it felt like a pretty fun one.â
Perhaps The Legend of Tarzan is the only movie in which SkarsgĂ„rd has unabashedly traded on his looks. Even so, he was not a shoo-in for the role. Warner Bros was concerned that he was not âprimal and animalisticâ enough. That changed when a video of a very drunken SkarsgĂ„rd leading a football chant in support of his beloved local team, Hammarby, popped up on YouTube. SkarsgĂ„rd recalls the embarrassment he felt the morning after the match when he woke up with a hangover and realised the video had gone viral. âI was like, âOh God, thatâs it.â â
In fact, instead of sabotaging his career, it solidified it. âMy agent sent it to Warners and said, âIs he not animalistic enough for you?â â
SkarsgĂ„rd doesnât move in Hollywood circles. âOne of my closest friends makes yoghurt,â he says. He is referring to Siggi Hilmarsson, an Icelandic entrepreneur who has set up a very successful yoghurt business in the United States, Siggiâs Dairy, soon to launch in the UK. âWe met eight years ago at a glögg [mulled wine] party. It was almost like an epiphany. I knew immediately, âOh shit, I think weâre best friends.â And we are. It was like a love story, but on a platonic level.â
Single at the moment, he is waiting for a similar epiphany in his love life. âIâm not going to settle and say, âOh, youâre all right â letâs make a family.â Iâm more romantic than that. I have friends whoâve done that and theyâre not happy, and then they go through horrible divorces. I was with a girl for a couple of years and it ended up not working out, but weâre still close friends.â He is referring to Alexa Chung, the British television presenter.
Does he think heâll end up with someone Swedish? âNo, I think British,â he says immediately. âFrom a very early age, Iâve always thought Iâll end up with a Brit. Thereâs something about the mentality. Brits have a sensibility that I respond to. They make fun of themselves in a way that I really appreciate.â
However, before the stampede begins, there are two things to bear in mind. One: he wants to have âat leastâ nine children â âto beat my dadâ. And two: he is in no hurry to settle down. âThatâs not to say I want to wait until Iâm 65,â he explains. âI come from a huge family and I hope one day to have that myself. But I am having the time of my life: Iâm working with extraordinary film-makers. I feel like Iâm in a good space. Iâm not avoiding a relationship, but Iâm also not desperate for it. If it happens, it happens.â
His friends and family all say that SkarsgĂ„rd has not changed since becoming famous. âThe good thing,â says his father, âis that he, and all his brothers, have a very healthy attitude towards the fundamental silliness of fame. I donât know how they got inoculated against it, but it makes me happy.â
âThere are definitely moments when I feel that what I am doing is trivial,â says SkarsgĂ„rd . âOne of my brothers is an ICU doctor, and when Iâm in Sweden heâll come home having been up for 18 hours literally saving lives, and Iâm on the couch working on a script saying, âIâm not really feeling this love scene.â â
His friend Siggi Hilmarsson describes how SkarsgĂ„rd avoids the glitz, preferring âthe local diveâ when they meet up. âAnd heâs a good guest. My girlfriend is always impressed by the fact that when he comes over for dinner, he cleans up the dishes.â
Hilmarsson describes taking SkarsgĂ„rd on a week-long hiking trip with some other friends to Hornstrandir in Iceland, a nature reserve that is only accessible by boat. An hour into the hike, SkarsgĂ„rdâs old hiking boots were falling apart. âThe glue under the sole just disintegrated,â says Hilmarsson. âWe tried to fix them with tape, but nothing worked. He was feeling absolutely miserable, because he didnât want to be a nuisance: he was the new guy and we were all old friends. We were debating whether to ask the boat to return or try to hike back. But he absolutely refused. He said, âThereâs no way in the world Iâm going to disrupt this hike. Weâre not turning back.â He wound up hiking the entire mountain trip barefoot and in wading shoes â which he had brought for crossing rivers.â
With all this unremitting niceness, no wonder he seeks unlikeable characters to play. âI gravitate towards roles that are dark. I find that psychologically interesting to explore. Iâm quite an optimistic guy in real life, quite upbeat, but I find it cathartic to explore aspects that are so different.â
It is hard to imagine someone more hateful than Perry in the last episode of Big Little Lies, beating and kicking his wife at a party while dressed as Elvis. Before filming, he and Kidman spent time together with the two boys who play their sons, so that they would feel like a real family when shooting began. â[Nicole and I] became very close and we really trusted each other. It was crucial in diving into the darkness of that relationship that we were always there for each other. Perry was not the stereotypical wife-beater. He was tormented ⊠We were both drained after those scenes.â
To everyoneâs relief, Perry was killed at the end of season one. Yet he has just been filming the second season in Monterey. How does that work? âI donât think I can say anything,â says SkarsgĂ„rd . There was even a glimpse of Perryâs funeral â although you donât have to watch many television soaps to know that a funeral is not always confirmation of a death. SkarsgĂ„rd laughs. âIâm not going to be stepping out of the shower [he is referring to Bobby Ewingâs return from the dead in Dallas]. But there could be other ways.â
Rumours include a twin brother, played of course by SkarsgĂ„rd , or perhaps more likely, flashbacks. One detail he can confirm: âMeryl Streep plays my mother.â
Who is Andrew Kerr, I ask. He looks surprised. Someone has blown his cover. âOh no, Iâm going to have to change my alias.â I donât have to mention it, I say. He shrugs. âI have to change it anyway.â I show him the picture of the Andrew Kerr I found. âIs that him? Shit, I never knew. I love Glastonbury. Itâs my favourite festival.â His Andrew Kerr is different. âI was reading a book about Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh and their secret love affair. Olivier would check in to hotels in the English countryside as Andrew Kerr. Literally, the book was in my hand when my agent called me and said you should think about an alias when you travel.â He looks embarrassed. âIt sounds very pretentious now.â
In fact, SkarsgĂ„rd could not be less pretentious. âIâm very aware of how disgustingly lucky I am,â he says. âI donât expect it to last for ever.â So where does he see himself in ten years? He looks baffled, as though he has not given it a secondâs thought. âI donât even know where Iâll be in ten days.â
The Little Drummer Girl continues at 9pm on Sundays on BBC One
Sources:Â Article:Â Helena de Bertodano for The Times Magazine (x), Photos of Alex at the November 8, 2018 SAG-AFTRA Little Drummer Girl screening & Q&A:Â Originals via JustJared (x) & SG Gallery for The Library
















