Alexander Skarsgard Is a Neck Man: Why the 'True Blood' hunk has TV's hottest set of fangs.

From Newsweek

The only Swedish import that ever stole my heart was IKEA. OK, maybe a Volvo. But then along came Alexander Skarsgard, the vampire bad boy with a true (though a non-beating) heart in HBO's True Blood. Skarsgard plays Eric Northman, the 1,000-year-old Viking sheriff of the undead, but he might as well be named Vampire McSteamy. Do we blame Anna Paquin for secretly fantasizing about him when the sun goes down? That smoldering face. That surfer-boy hair. Those chiseled cheekbones.

There are thousands, maybe millions, of women out there who are smitten with Alex (as I like to call him). He also charms the pants off men, like his costar Nelsan Ellis. "He's very humble, extremely talented, and so freaking Mount Olympus good-looking that sometimes I just want to be him," says Ellis, who plays another True Blood fan favorite, Lafayette, a gay, cross-dressing, short-order cook. "But, I want to say, 'Brother, please don't stand next to me.' " In that case, Alex, could you stand next to me instead?

Skargard's take on Eric is a little bit Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (he's so mean) mixed with a little Mr. Darcy (he's so misunderstood). His character lurked in the shadows in season one—"I was a glorified extra," he says—but he's quickly become a pivotal part of the show. Eric is the hunk trying to woo away Sookie (Paquin) from her vampiric main squeeze (Stephen Moyer), in a love triangle inspired by the Charlaine Harris books, that could get extra heated in the show's season finale this weekend. As True Blood has become HBO's biggest hit since The Sopranos, averaging about 5 million viewers a week, Skarsgard is the vampire of the hour. Paquin might have won the Golden Globe, but Skarsgard won over the blogosphere. "The real truth is, I was in Europe when season two started, and I had no idea how big the thing had gotten," Skarsgard says. "I landed in L.A., went to Comic-Con and it was absolutely crazy.

read on