Alexander Skarsgård: ‘There’s a politeness to Swedes. It’s a facade. Deep down we’re animals’
Alexander Skarsgård is an embarrassing creep who tries to coerce women into partying naked with him in hotel suites. Or so it would seem from the version of himself that he played last year in Donald Glover’s comedy Atlanta. “I’m not saying that I dance around in a leopard-print thong in front of girls I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m also not saying that I don’t. That kind of thing works really well when there’s a kernel of truth in it.”
This twinkling, teasing playfulness represents the default setting of the 46year-old actor. His natural self-deprecation is what makes it so startling when he turns up on screen as another of the brutes and bastards that have become his speciality over the years. There was the violently abusive husband in the HBO series Big Little Lies and the violently abusive cop in War on Everyone; a racist in Passing and a rapist in the Straw Dogs remake, as well as a sad, moustachioed sleazeball who sleeps with his partner’s underage daughter in The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Eric, the vampire he played across all seven series of True Blood, was an absolute catch by comparison.
It could even be argued that Skarsgård looks lost or vague in those roles that don’t supply some darkness to temper his natural sheen. He was ferocious as a mud-caked proto-Hamlet in Robert Eggers’s wild Viking epic The Northman, but as the yodelling vineswinger in The Legend of Tarzan, there was none of the usual depth present behind his beauty. Whereas his character in the new satirical horror Infinity Pool – directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David – is up to his disbelieving eyes in vanity, amorality and rancid privilege.
Skarsgård plays a novelist called
James living off the wealth of his wife, Em (Cleopatra Coleman), and struggling to write a second book six years after his debut. In search of inspiration, he and Em visit a luxurious resort in an unnamed country. What begins as a taunting comedy about the awfulness of the 1% veers off into extremity when the couple fall in with the hedonistic Gabi (Mia Goth) and her partner, Alban (Jalil Lespert). All it takes for the impressionable James to be hooked by these reprobates is a few compliments from Gabi followed by a sex act shown in graphic detail. “My job is so hard,” the actor says with a smirk.
Cronenberg and Skarsgård are both the sons of talented men. (Skarsgård’s father is Stellan Skarsgård who, like him, is part of the Lars von Trier Cinematic Universe.) Director and actor also have a certain placid temperament in common. “There’s a politeness to Canadians and Swedes,” says Skarsgård. “But it’s all just a fucking facade. Deep down we’re animals. We’re just very good at concealing it.” He gestures at me. “Brits too. It’s all down there, though. You can just open the tap and let it out. That’s what this movie does.”
Even as the film descends into gruesome horror, Skarsgård remains com