Alexander Skarsgard: Ex-child actor plays vampire and soldier

MANILA, Philippines—At 13, Alexander Skarsgard was a child actor in Sweden who wasn’t comfortable with the limelight. So the son of veteran character actor Stellan Skarsgard quit and spent seven years as a “normal” youngster. But he missed acting, so he eventually moved to New York for theater studies.

Alexander recently appeared as Sgt. Brad “Iceman” Colbert in the HBO miniseries “Generation Kill” and as enigmatic vampire Eric Northman in HBO’s ongoing series “True Blood.” Following are excerpts from a roundtable phone interview with the actor, arranged by HBO Asia.

How open to interpretation is your vampire character? Did you look at screen vampires for inspiration?

Yeah, when I did my research, I re-watched movies that I’ve seen, like the old “Nosferatu” with Max Schreck from the ’20s, Bela Lugosi’s “Dracula,” and Werner Herzog’s “Nosferatu” from the ’70s. Obviously, Eric Northman’s quite a different character. But diving into that old culture of vampirism was to get my creativity and inspiration going, basically. When you create a world with vampires, it’s up to you if you wanna do the whole thing with crosses or garlic or what happens when a vampire meets the sun. We hung on to a couple of those, but some of them we just dismissed. So it’s very open to interpretation …

How much did playing “Iceman” Colbert affect the way you looked at war and the US Marines?

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