Alicia Vikander

Meet the svensk star who matches Redmayne’s performance beat for beat.

Call it kismet, but Alicia Vikander was evidently destined for The Danish Girl. She was on the tube in London when she read the announcement that Tom Hooper and Eddie Redmayne would be collaborating on a project she’d been aware of for years. “When I heard they were making it, I thought, ‘I want to see that film!’” Vikander recalls, looking tanned in a backless, halterneck Céline dress. Two days later, her agents sent her the script – with the role of Gerda earmarked for her.

At the time, the Swedish actress was best known for playing a Danish queen in A Royal Affair and featuring in Joe Wright’s Anna

Karenina. Hooper had been given a sneak early look at Alex Garland’s sci-fi Ex_Machina – though even he probably couldn’t have predicted the year Vikander has been having, with starring roles in Testament Of Youth and

The Man From U.N.C.L.E alongside support parts in Son Of A Gun and Burnt.

“What I loved about Alicia’s energy,” says Hooper, “[ is that] she brings a different, northern European spirit to the piece, which is quite different from Eddie’s style of acting.” It’s her forceful performance that makes certain

The Danish Girl is not all about Redmayne. “It’s quite rare to have a film where both the leads are extremely equal,” she says. “I also think that’s the essence of this journey – they’re both on this transition together. It is an equal journey and you kind of relate to both of them.”

With the 27-year-old Vikander also having completed Tulip Fever – another period art tale, this time casting her as a painter’s muse – she can also be seen in The Light Between Oceans. Arriving in cinemas just a week after The Danish

Girl, this new movie from Blue Valentine’s Derek Cianfrance sees her play wife to Michael Fassbender’s lighthouse keeper. She calls her co-star, whom she briefly romanced earlier this year, “one of the great actors of his generation”.

Perhaps most intriguingly, this former ballet dancer from Gothenberg is currently shooting the fifth Bourne movie, with Matt Damon returning as super-spy Jason Bourne. “I’m a big fan of the Bourne movies,” she says. “Above anything, it’s a popcorn franchise but it has some great substance and intelligence to it, which I really love.” Like The Danish Girl, the timing was spot-on. “I’m always looking for that chance to be thrown out in totally new and different roles. And this is very far away from anything I’ve done before.” JM