Vikander at the SAG Awards where she won Best Supporting ActressWhen I sat down with Alicia Vikander to discuss her career she was full of surprises, and not just in the way she answered questions. She approached in what looked like the simplest black dress, nothing special at all, until she turned around and the dress had an elaborately elegant back with a trailing bow. She promptly plopped down in a chair, opened a small bag of chips, and began munching away. She's a vision, alright, but the vision kept shifting: Unadorned Beauty, Glamorous Star, Girl Next Door.
This hard to pin down picture shouldn't come as a surprise. In the short time we've been watching her she's been equally believable as a sly robot, a conflicted Danish queen, a debutate Russian aristocrat, a bohemian artist whose world is turned upside down, and a British writer during wartime.
But she's been so ubiquitous this year, both on screen and red carpets, that we're wondering which sides of herself she's yet to reveal. So we begin, counterintuively, with her future.
[The following interview was conducted before she won her SAG Award else we'd have talked about it.]
NATHANIEL R: You've had so many movies released in the last few years. If you don't slow down, what's going to be left to accomplish?!?
her career-makers: Anna Karenina (2012), A Royal Affair (2012), Ex Machina (2015), The Danish Girl (2015)
ALICIA VIKANDER: There's two more this year. As an actress you never know what's around the corner. Eddie and I still talk about that fear of not knowing as an actor if you're going to get work.
NATHANIEL: Even when you're working that much?
VIKANDER: Yes! It's really something I've very humble about. It's difficult to say because I'm already so fortunate. But I was brought up in a small country and I never thought -- when I did a Danish film I thought that was my big international break. 'I went outside Sweden to make a film.' So, it's been beyond any kind of dream or belief. I'm really very happy.
You're from Sweden but two of your biggest thing have been Danish centered. This...
And A Royal Affair, yes.
The Scandinavian acting community -- do you feel any connection to them when you're working abroad. I know you've acted with Bill Skarsgård and Martin Wallström for instance.
Yeah! All the Skarsgård brothers, Rebecca Ferguson who i know; I was at a Christmas party when she was shooting Mission: Impossible and it's wonderful to see how things are just kicking off. I watched her career back in Sweden and she's a wonderful woman. Noomi Rapace is another one, the kind of pioneer for our time. In every industry the world has become global. Acting, too. Actors are very open to other cultures. In acting, it's the language barrier. It's still a second language but if you can overcome that, you can travel everywhere.
NATHANIEL: You can make Hollywood, British, and Scandinavian films! Now, with The Danish Girl I'd like to talk about your choice to play Gerda with such modernity. She doesn't feel "period" at all really; she barrels forward when she walks.
ALICIA VIKANDER: It's interesting what you consider being modern. I don't think people have changed so much; people are people. Society around us and the norms, of course, have changed. If you saw the photos of Gerda and Lili -- it's quite extraordinary to see. I mean they didn't have Instagram so they didn't take photos every day but for people of that time it's quite a lot of photographs. Apparently they liked to do that. [Enthusiastically imitates some poses] She slumps! It's Dresses! That's actually who they were. Denmark in the 1920s wasn't as forward pushing as Paris at the time, but she was ahead of her time. She was a very modern woman, a working woman. And Lili as Einar to be with a woman who was working was really quite radical.
One of the best scenes, midway through, is when you're telling Lili that this needs to stop, that you need Einar. And when you're looking as Gerda at Lili when you're drawing. So much is taking place within their flat -- it almost feels intrusive to watch, it's so intimate and marital. How did you and Eddie build that?
I thought it was such a key thing in Lucinda Cox's script. Gerda in one way is finding her voice as an artist in this film and it's something that she's been searching for. Subconciously it's Lili coming out of the painting. It's almost like, in her self, she has seen the true person who she loves. That becomes the truth. And I think that's reflective of anyone who finds the truth. That's when art starts to flourish and become something real and good.
It's an intimate ride and I couldn't have done that if I hadn't had someone like both Eddie and Tom [Director Tom Hooper] there who created a space that was very safe. Eddie is a wonderful man and easy to work with. He's become a good friend. He pushed me in new directions and I knew also that I had to give him challenges back. And that's how you get both connection and friction that makes a relationship interesting and alive.
One thing that's really interesting about your two big films right now, Ex Machina and The Danish Girl, in a way they are both about performing gender. Lili as Einar, of course, and Ava who is technically artificial.
Did you ever think about that?
[Pause] Nope.
[Laughter] You've worked with Domhnall Gleeson before but on Ex Machina was it an interesting challenge to be separated from him?
Her screen partner in both Anna Karenina (2012) and Ex Machina (2015)
ALICIA VIKANDER: It was very interesting! Actually I give a lot of kudos to our production designer. That's one of the best scripts I've ever read. It was so solid. There were not many stage directions but you knew they were in a space with the glass wall between them. All of us -- Oscar, Domhnall, Alex and everyone who read it -- we instantly see Ava, the research subject, as the monkey in the cage. He's there to go in and watch and test and analyze this robot. But when we got there the Production Designer had decided to make a small glass box where the interviewer goes in. Instead it's the subject who can walk around and look at the person interviewing. That really changed it a lot -- it changed the rules.
NATHANIEL: As an actor so much of your career is performing for the camera, and now you're a celebrity and everyone is watching you. So do you ever feel like that, like you're the one in the glass box?
Hmmm. To do all the interviews and meet people. Talking about the films -- that's my biggest passion in my life. Even though you're nervous it's exciting to release a film in to the world; everything that goes with that is wonderful. Having someone photograph you when you don't know is a different thing.
Not actually part of the job
No, no. It's like two different worlds.
Ex Machina, one of our best pictures of the year, is currently available on DVD and BluRay. The Danish Girl, nominated for four Oscars, including Alicia Vikander as Best Supporting Actress, is still playing in limited release.