Scan Magazine – August 2018

Alicia Vikander

Hollywood’s favourite badass

In five years, she has gone from art house to a-list. Swedish actor Alicia Vikander
talks to Louise Gannon about transforming her body to play Lara Croft, her unhappy
life as a child ballerina, and her interesting journey via London, to where she is now.

Text and photos: Louise Gannon / The Telegraph / The Interview People

Scan Magazine | Cover Feature | Alicia Vikander

In the luxury apartment of a West End
hotel, the Oscar-winning actor Alicia
Vikander is not quite feeling herself. “This
makes me feel very small and a bit over-
whelmed,” she says, nodding towards
the spacious sitting room furnished with
embroidered sofas and hand-painted ar-
moires. “This is really not who I am.”

She opts to sit on a stiff dining chair,
pulling it up close to the table, and she
does look quite small. Her possessions –
largely books and casual clothes – barely
take up half of one of the many wardrobes
in the apartment, which is her home for a
week during the promotion of her latest
film, Tomb Raider. The only exception to
this frugality is a large double-banded di-
amond ring on her wedding finger.

But Vikander is not small. Right now, in
the film industry, the Swedish daughter of
a psychiatrist (Svante) and a stage actress
(Maria) is huge. She has managed to pull
off the difficult trick of being acclaimed
by critics while having the populist clout
to put bums on seats in cinemas. She
has also given gossip columnists plenty
to write about after marrying the equally
sought-after German-Irish actor Michael

Fassbender at a low-key ceremony in Ibiza

six months ago.

From art house to fantasy and

blockbusters

Vikander started her film career in

Swedish art-house films such as Pure

(2010), in which she played a troubled

20-year-old who finds solace in the mu-

sic of Mozart, before appearing as the in-

génue heroine Kitty in Joe Wright’s Anna

Karenina (2012) and then starring in the

globally acclaimed Testament of Youth

(she played a young Vera Brittain) and

Ex Machina (which saw her nominated

for Golden Globe and Bafta awards). Two

years ago, she won an Oscar for Best

Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl, in

which she pretty much stole the film from

Eddie Redmayne as Gerda, the conflicted

wife of Einar Wegener (Redmayne), the

first known assigned-male-at-birth per-

son to transition, in 1920s Denmark.

She has a habit of making surprising

choices. She has flitted from art house

(Euphoria, The Light Between Oceans)

to fantasy (Seventh Son) to light come-

dy (Burnt) to big-budget blockbusters

(Jason Bourne). Her latest film is firmly

in blockbuster territory; she has taken on

the iconic role of the archaeological ad-

venturer Lara Croft in a reboot of Tomb

Raider, alongside Dominic West and

Kristin Scott Thomas. In the months be-

fore the film started shooting, she honed

her body into a ripped, muscle-bound

fighting machine – not only so she would

look the part, but to enable her to do all

her own stunts. “I think it’s your duty to

commit as much as possible to the role

and who she is as a woman,” Vikander

says. “For me, building myself up and do-

ing stunts as an actress was in part about

becoming her, and to be honest, it was

also a lot of fun – I like to push myself.”

Vikander’s stunts included impossible-

looking cliff jumps and MMA fighting. “I

loved everything except the water,” she

says. “I had to spend hours in water with

a wind machine on me to create waves.

One scene they had to keep reshooting

because my skin went blue with cold and

they couldn’t hide it with make-up.”

She grins. “People think of me as this

art-house girl. But when I was a little

girl in Sweden, the films I loved were all

those amazing action movies – Indiana

Jones and The Mummy. The idea that I

was being asked to do this movie...” She

pauses and shakes her head. “To be in

a movie that you dreamt about as a kid

just seemed completely surreal. So if I

was going to do this, I was going to do

Issue 115 | August 2018 | 57