Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Alexander Skarsgård exclusive with GQ UK !

Alexander Skarsgård is big. Very big. But that much was apparent even before GQ.com meets all 6'4" of him in the flesh at a central London hotel, because when we announced on Twitter we were set to interview him we received an astonishing number of replies - mostly, it has to be said, from would-be fangbangers. Zoolander aside, the towering Swede first came to our attention as Sergeant Brad "Iceman" Colbert in the exceptional Iraq war miniseries Generation Kill, adapted from Evan Wright's book by The Wire alumni David Simon and Ed Burns. But it wasn't until his turn as the broodingly menacing 1,000-year-old vampire sheriff Eric Northman in another HBO must-see, True Blood, that we really bit. A peripheral but compelling presence in season one, Eric comes to the fore with arguably the most satisfying character arc in season two, currently airing on Channel 4 ( season three has just finished in the States).
He's since been shot by Annie Liebovitz for American fashion brand Hickey Freeman, crippled Lady Gaga in the video for "Paparazzi" and is now starring opposite Rihanna in upcoming big-budget blockbuster Battleship. "It's pretty exciting. It's a crazy production. I've never worked on anything of this magnitude. It's so big. We're shooting at Pearl Harbour on big ships. It's a lot of fun." Not least because he's filming in Hawaii. "I went up to the North Shore and took a surf lesson and it was amazing. That's definitely something I'm going to pick up. I've lived in California for for six years and I've never surfed." Despite having been up since 4am (on account of jetlag rather than any nocturnal bloodsucking), he mainlined coffee and talked to us about fame, season four and why he "loves being naked"...

Alexander Skarsgård on...


Good vs evil
In season one, you don't really get to know Eric. He's in a couple of episodes and he's in the background: the evil boss of Bill. Everyone was like, "You're the villain." To me, there was so much more to Eric than that. So it was great in season two to actually get a chance to show that people might be wrong when they label someone as good or bad. That's what I find interesting not only in Eric but in any character I play.  A character on screen that's the "good guy" or the "bad guy", they're never interesting. There's got to be an internal struggle, the duality is important to find. I had a lot of fun when you finally see this guy that is labelled as the bad guy can actually show compassion…

read on GQ UK

2 comments:

Rita said...

He always has the best interviews and he
is so honest in his answers.

Sharon said...

Good interview. I like him naked, also.