Alexander Skarsgård
Wisdom from the Dior Men’s artistic director’s conversation with Esquire editor-in-chief Alex Bilmes
He has the talent, charm and family connections that might suggest becoming one of the industry’s most in-demand actors was easy. Not so, as the Swede explained in his own disarming way
Acting was never Alexander Skarsgård’s childhood dream, but being the son of one of Sweden’s best-known actors, Stellan Skarsgård, naturally exposed him to the industry. At 13, he landed the lead role in the Swedish film, Hunden som log [The Dog that Smiled]. Suddenly, Skarsgård was being recognised in the street, but fame didn’t agree with him: “It’s an awkward age when you’re 13 for any kid and I just wanted to be normal.”
Skarsgård quit acting completely and it was eight years before he found his way back. After a stint in drama school, he starred in a Swedish theatre production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? Hollywood wasn’t even in the game plan at that point.
In fact, Skarsgård’s first taste of international appeal came about by accident. The actor was visiting his father on set in America, when his father’s manager asked if he wanted to go to an audition. “I thought that sounded fun,” Skarsgård remembers, “mostly because it was a great story to tell my friends back home: ‘I was in Hollywood and I went to an audition.’”
The audition was for Zoolander. “It was a very surreal experience,” he admitted. “Ben Stiller was in the room. I got the part. They flew me business class, which I’d never flown before, and put me up in a nice hotel.” (Skarsgård was a model in the iconic “gas fight” scene.)
“It was pretty nice, but it also gave me a very warped idea of life in Hollywood. I remember thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll go back to Hollywood, it’s super-easy.’” So Skarsgård moved to Los Angeles in 2004, but his repertoire of Swedish dramas and art house productions didn’t translate into instant stardom.
Three lean years followed, as he worked to find his footing in the acting world: “I realised how difficult it was, and how competitive, and that I wasn’t going to get served anything.” The actor went to countless open auditions with no success. “It was quite demoralising,” Skarsgård admits.
By 2007, he was completely disillusioned and ready to move back to Sweden when David Simon’s Generation Kill, Skarsgård’s most significant break, finally landed. “It was some of the best writing I’ve ever
read,” he said, and crucially, they were looking for unknown actors. That was the turning point; True Blood came knocking before Generation Kill had even wrapped, offering him the role of Eric Northman, the Vikingvampire-bad-boy that sent him into a whole new orbit.
Since then it’s been a busy time for Skarsgård who starred in David Yates’s The Legend of Tarzan, and whose performance in Big Little Lies won him a spate of awards. Currently filming The Stand, he is following his brother Bill (of Pennywise fame) by playing another notorious Stephen King villain, Randall Flagg.
Being in demand has its challenges. On arriving in London for the Esquire Townhouse, he told someone: “It’s great to be back in Los Angeles.”
“It was my ‘Hello, Cleveland!’ moment,” he later confessed. Alexander Skarsgård appeared at Esquire Townhouse as a Clarks ambassador
‘[During my first three years as an actor] I realised how difficult it was, and how competitive, and that I wasn’t going to get served anything’
“My childhood was quite nomadic. Ethiopia, Botswana, Ecuador, Bahamas. I was quite obsessed by nature. I was trying to catch any animal I could, like poisonous snakes, to keep them as a pet.”
“The first piece of clothing I became obsessed with was a T-shirt with a lion on which I refused to take off. I was probably about four.”
“I came back to London properly at about 14 and saw magazines like The Face and i-D, and I just immediately wanted to be part of that world.”
“Just after college, I met Lee McQueen — Alexander McQueen — and he was like an older brother to me. He worked like a pure artist. We didn’t really talk about work things, we’d just drive around in his car listening to Shalamar and having a laugh and go out to clubs and pretend to be builders. He’d always talk about me which I thought was incredibly generous. And from that I work with quite a lot of young designers and I support them.” “It’s very intense when we work because I’m very fast and I know exactly what I like and generally the collections don’t change from the minute that we start them till the end. We’re working on three or four collections at a time. The pace is very fast.”
“What McLaren and Westwood did together was the most exciting, modern thing ever. The fact that they could take a school blazer from John Lewis and then turn it into this really avant-garde punk thing is just the coolest.”
“One thing I love about Christian Dior is that he was a gallerist before he was a couturier, and he worked with Picasso and Salvador Dali. That was a really interesting thing to bring into the world of Dior because it’s so inherent in him.”
“I really love Kanye [West], and it’s interesting to see what he’s doing now because he was talking about it back then. I admire that vision of someone where they have that constant flow going forwards.”
“I don’t like the word ‘streetwear’. When I had my own label, I think ‘sportswear’ was more appropriate — American sportswear, which includes tailoring. So I was mixing it all up and I think that’s what people liked.”
“I think people in London take risks. There is that thing of just going out and doing it. I don’t know if it’s coming from a small island that makes people do that. Japan’s also quite similar.”
“Fashion is an art-versus-commerce conversation. I’m a commercial artist — more Warhol than an avant-garde painter.”
“I love facts and sales figures. I go to every store around the world when I’m in a place and meet the people that work in there and ask them what customers want, because in the end you’re working for the customer.”
“I’ve always had that thing where I think, ‘The worst someone will say to you is “no”.’ I’ve always thought big. I don’t know why — it’s just in me.”