ALICIA VIKANDER

The butt-kicking feminist action hero we can all get behind.

ALICIA VIKANDER HAD ME AT “HALLÅ”. The Oscar-winning Swedish actress, who is starring in 2018’s biggest blockbuster, Tomb Raider, and happens to be married to the equally bankable Michael Fassbender, turned up to breakfast at London’s Haymarket Hotel five minutes early. Her cheeks were flushed from having walked the 52 minutes from north London (a perfect opportunity to catch up on the phone with her dad), hair swept back into a messy ponytail, wearing skinny jeans, white trainers and a chunky grey jumper. She doesn’t like to stand out, which she tells me is very Swedish, as her homeland suffers from tall-poppy syndrome. “You shouldn’t be too good, or do something different… In a way it’s great to grow up with that, as it makes you very grounded, but also a bit scared of standing out and making a big leap away from the rest of the group.”

Vikander took that leap at 15, when she moved from her family home to attend ballet school in Stockholm, and she’s been outgrowing the poppy field ever since. Critically acclaimed performances in Anna Karenina, Ex Machina, The Light Between Oceans, plus a best supporting actress Oscar for The Danish Girl, have led her to take on every video gamer’s fantasy, Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. The film is a prequel to Angelina Jolie’s 2001-2003 franchise (so Lara Croft is younger this time round), which, even back then, before social media, grossed a massive $550 million. It brings with it millions of dollars worth of merchandising opportunities (hands up for an Alicia Vikander action figure) and a whole new level of global recognition for this unassuming star.

“When they first called me about making a new Tomb Raider, I was like, ‘Hasn’t that been done?’” says the 29-year-old. “And then I realised there was a chance to tell a story about a girl that I think a lot of young people will relate to. When we meet her at the beginning of this film, she lives in a commune in Hackney [in London] and is a bicycle courier delivering food. You get to see her mature and turn into something exceptional.”

Vikander says the character’s journey really resonated with her, particularly because she was the same age as Lara when she first came to London and lived with her girlfriends – a crew of Swedish musicians, including Tove Lo. “There’s an awful lot of pressure on you when you’re 20, 21, not really knowing what you want to do with your life – and that’s exactly the position Lara is in.”

Training for Tomb Raider was arduous. “For three months before filming, I started every morning with an hour’s workout. Then there was a lot of eating going on; I had to have five meals a day,” she says. “I wanted Lara to be strong. I’m very petite myself, and I wanted the audience to find the action sequences plausible – to believe that she could do it, that she could lift herself up with her own body weight.”

One of the most demanding days of filming involved Vikander being thrown down rapids of a white-water-rafting course that was built for the 2012 Olympics with her hands tied together, over and over again until they got the shot. I wonder what’s more difficult: making such a physically draining film or a more emotionally taxing one, known as she is for her ability to plumb the depths of raw human experience. “It’s interesting,” she says. “With physical films, as long as you get home, you get a good night’s rest. Weirdly enough, it gives you energy in the end; it’s just really tough to go through at the time. When I think about some of the biggest, most emotionally draining scenes I’ve done – in The Danish Girl, for example – it’s not too different. I found myself having to go to sleep afterwards, but by the next day I’d be fine.”

For Vikander, it’s dealing with the emotional trauma in real life that’s most taxing. “In real life you hold back, you always try to pull yourself together. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t cry very often. I try to be fine about things, which I think is a very human thing. But as an actor, when you have stories to tell about these kinds of emotional moments, you have to push yourself to go there. I don’t keep this darkness hovering over me, though. It’s more like it comes out and it’s a physical thing [just watch her portrayal of a woman miscarrying in The Light Between Oceans for an example], and that makes it easier to walk away and move on.”

I get the sense that dealing with the real-life moments is something Vikander is still getting to grips with. I ask if she has ever lost someone she loves. “My mum was very ill a few years ago, and I was in the middle of filming – it was when my career was taking off, so my dad stepped in. It was an immense support.” She says it was a “very tough time”, because she wanted to be with her family, but even her mother, who was battling cancer, said, “You can’t.” It made her feel lonely, but she would tell herself, “What I’m going through is nothing compared to what she’s going through.” Her mother, also an actress, is now in remission and recently starred in a play in Sweden. Vikander attended the first night. “I just jumped on a plane, because I couldn’t miss it for anything in the world.” Vikander was so overwhelmed with pride that she did that rare thing – she cried. “It was a total parent-child role reversal. They’d come to see me singing at school and I’d say, ‘Why are you crying? That’s just weird and embarrassing.’ Well, that was me this time.”

Her mother Maria divorced her father Svante (a psychiatrist) when she was a child, but Vikander says she’s never had anything but a happy relationship with him and her five half-siblings from his other relationships. After Anna Karenina, when her career really took off, Vikander’s biggest fear was that she would lose touch with her friends and family. “I was terrified they wouldn’t be there when I went back.” She tells me that, a few weeks ago, she met up with her oldest, closest friends. “We had the best time together; nothing had changed. I’ve always been very aware of wanting to keep what is my emotional home and my family close to me.”

We talk about the importance of having an “anchor”, a strong sense of what’s important that isn’t defined by superficial things – the films, the awards, the Louis Vuitton campaigns, the media frenzy over your heart-throb actor husband (Vikander married Fassbender last October). “I have that anchor now,” she says, smiling. “I felt a bit lost. I was maybe not so happy with myself for a while…” Now she’s in a good place, she wants to help others. We meet amid the wave of allegations against male producers and the topic of sexism in Hollywood hangs thickly in the air. “I’ve been very fortunate that I haven’t had any sexual harassment on set. But I’ve been in situations where people in power have put me on the spot, or made me feel stupid and young when I wasn’t able to express myself publicly. Once, an older female co-star actually said on my behalf, ‘That’s not okay.’” She wants to be this person now, looking out for her younger colleagues who maybe don’t have the confidence or experience she does. “I can now speak up and say that is not fine. I’ve been given the fortunate position of not being, in the same way, afraid of losing my job, which is deep down the reason you don’t want to be in trouble, you don’t want to be difficult…”

While filming Tomb Raider, she was conscious of making Lara Croft powerful. “Sure, Lara is a sex symbol in some ways, but for me, what makes a woman or a man attractive is someone who dares to speak up, who dares to show their personality. It’s tough being a young girl at this time, you know? I’m working in an industry that lives on creating an image, a fantasy, and I feel like I need to show younger women that’s the way it is. Even I was fooled [into thinking a woman in Hollywood needed to be a certain way]. When I first went to America to work, I was told, ‘Maybe you should wear heels and curl your hair when you go to meetings.’” She took that advice, but didn’t feel good about it. “I really felt compromised, like, ‘Shit, I ended up there. I did it.’ You know? I thought I was trying not to be like everyone else. I almost felt ashamed.”

It’s no wonder Vikander needed a hiatus from Hollywood. “As an actor, there’s this underlying fear of never getting another job. Until now, I’ve always felt like I couldn’t stop, but I realised I had to take a break, I had to remember what it was to be me without work. I don’t have a clue what’s coming next, and I’m fine with that. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, the past few years. I was thrown into so many new experiences that I could never have even imagined, so I couldn’t really prepare myself emotionally for them.”

Vikander and Fassbender recently moved to Lisbon. “When I met my husband three-and-a-half years ago, he mentioned he’d been to Lisbon and loved it, and I knew friends who were moving there. And that was a time when I was just starting to feel really at home in London, but after Brexit I was like, ‘You know what, I want to stay in Europe.’ I’ve fallen in love with the city and the fact that it’s just on the waterfront, close to nature, and I like the warm weather a lot. It’s a place that is just constantly alive. And they’re known for their sardines; I do love sardines.”

As much as I’m desperate to know the inner workings of their married life, I understand the reasons Vikander wants to keep that part of her world private. It also means she is appreciated as an exceptional actress in her own right, and not the “wife of actor Michael Fassbender”, which is still a depressingly common narrative in Hollywood. What she does reveal is that the pair first met on the dance floor at the Toronto International Film Festival, and then again, a few months later, on the dance floor after the BAFTAS: “Yep, the first two times we met, we didn’t chat, we only danced.”

I can’t help but say “Sexy!” out loud and Vikander laughs. “Actually, we didn’t talk until we worked together [in The Light Between Oceans, during which the pair fell in love].” Vikander and Fassbender like nothing more than hosting friends at home. “I love to get guests playing games,” she says. “It’s like stepping on new ground for the first five minutes, then people really enjoy it. Normally, you kind of just fall into patterns of how dinner parties should be – you should be polite and you should say these things. But I like to shake the box a bit. I really enjoy throwing dinner parties or surprise parties and I can spend weeks planning them. I come up with games that introduce new people to one another. I spend hours with seating plans, even for a small dinner. It really makes such a difference. And I always try to put people next to someone they haven’t met before.” Did she spend a lot of time doing the seating plan for her wedding? She nods gravely. “A lot of time... It’s gut instinct in the end, though, like, ‘These people will have a fun time together.’” I have no trouble believing she’s a lot of fun, particularly after she tells me, “I do love a drink. More and more, I love wine, but I like vodka martinis or straight-up tequilas. I’ve taken to drinking straight, but I only ever have one or two, and I never really get drunk.”

It’s no wonder Vikander is the life of a party. She’s found love with one of the sexiest men alive, won an Oscar before turning 30, has a loving family, good friends and at her feet is a multimilliondollar film franchise, which, at a time when women in the industry are still being variously disempowered, is about a petite, initially unassuming young woman kicking ass and saving the world. I think we can all agree: that’s definitely something worth celebrating. E Tomb Raider is out now

“IT’S TOUGH BEING A YOUNG GIRL AT THIS TIME”