Alexander Skarsgard is on the cover of Play Magazine in the April 8th issue! There is an interview included as well!
Here’s an excerpt from the interview!
On playing Eric Northman and choosing to do True Blood:
“The biggest thing was Alan Ball, because I am a big fan of his work,” Skarsgard says.
“I met with him and I really liked him a lot, and I liked the character a lot, a guy who starts out, what you think is the villain, but then you can kind of understand him, and there’s a softer side to him as well and a sadness that I really liked.”
On his father, Stellan Skarsgard, and working with him in Melancholia:
“Dad is one of my best friends, so I love him so much,” he says. ”He is a really, really cool cat, and we worked together in 1983, my first movie (Ake och hans varld), back in Sweden and we have done an animated movie – where we don’t work together you just do voices. But this was the first time we actually had some scenes together, and it was an amazing experience.”
On preparing for Battleship:
“I was in the Swedish navy 15 years ago, and I worked on a mini-series, called Generation Kill about a platoon of Marines and both of those experiences were very useful in preparing to do this, Battleship,” Skarsgard says.
“It was more about the character and stuff about leadership and the dynamic and the relationship between officers and enlisted guys and little things like how do you address them? But it was also different; I play a commanding officer of a navy destroyer; that’s not what I did in the navy in Sweden.”
On why he joined the Swedish military at age 19:
“Because I come from a family of pacifists and I am a bit of a pacifist myself, I didn’t do it because I wanted to kill people,” he says.
“I’m from Sweden, no one is going to attack; we are not going to attack another country any time soon.
“It was more selfishly, I wanted the experience, I wanted that challenge.
“Growing up in a concrete jungle, I wanted to feel what it was like to be way out on the islands and there was this unit I was very intrigued and interested in and so I applied and got it.”
On whether Swedish actors are the new big thing in Hollywood:
“It’s difficult to say, is it a trend? I don’t know, a couple of years ago, everyone was Australian. Two years from now we will be not in fashion any more, and I’ll be out of work.”
On why he did Battleship:
Skarsgard says he took the role not for the big bucks, but for the challenge and the contrast it would give him coming straight off the art house of Melancholia.
“I read the script, it’s big, epic, fun, a really cool story, but I care more about the brothers, the relationship than the explosions.
“The process of making the movie, that’s what’s fun as an actor obviously, and this is my first big studio movie, so I didn’t really know.
“I heard stories from other actors on other movies where sometimes they feel that they are being micromanaged and there’s no creative freedom, they can’t really have fun with it.
“It’s all about ‘say your lines and then wait for the explosion’.
“Pete Berg, who is an actor himself, is very open.”
On adjusting to the LA lifestyle and wide open spaces:
“In Stockholm, all my friends live within five blocks of each other, we wouldn’t even have to call each other, I would just go down to the local coffee shop and I would run into friends and see them,” he says. “In LA that doesn’t really happen to me.”“
On what his dad taught him about keeping his personal life private:
“He was always very protective of the family, and us kids and he could be very open and talk about his work and himself and his characters, but you wouldn’t see like 25 house tours or ‘welcome to the Skarsgard family and this is my home, what’s in my fridge’.”
“I think that keeps you kind of sane, and that’s important for me as well, to not share every thing with everyone.”
Source: The Herald Sun via PressDisplay.com
Special thanks to Santress for the heads’ up and for the pictures!
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