it the very, very best I could. I was going
to give everything. Everyone remembers
Angelina Jolie [who played the character
in the noughties], but I wanted to make
Lara Croft my own.”
Among other actors and directors,
Vikander is known for two things: com-
mitment and intensity. Her drive is ex-
traordinary. It has taken her just half a
decade to go from foreign-actress status
to Hollywood a-lister, but in that time,
she has made 17 films. Fassbender,
when working with her on The Light
Between Oceans (shot in New Zealand in
2014), spoke of her as “fierce and brave”,
and Dominic West describes her as “ter-
rifyingly talented”. But Vikander does
not agree. Not yet. This is a woman still
wanting to prove her worth as an actress.
She was turned down for drama school
not once, but four times. “Every job I do, I
feel a fear of what people think,” she says
in her near-perfect English.
A woman raised by a woman
Vikander’s childhood was unconventional.
Her parents split up when she was just a
few months old and she divided her time
between living with her mother in Goth-
enburg and visiting her father – and five
half-siblings – at weekends. At the age of
four, her mother took her to see The Nut-
cracker. She immediately became hooked
on dance and, at nine, she joined a dance
school. At 15, she was accepted into the
Royal Swedish Ballet School in Stock-
holm, and moved to the capital.
Her time at the ballet school was not a
happy one, yet it gave her the discipline
and work ethic that have become her
trademark. “I look back on that time and
I don’t really recognise myself,” she says.
“I was very young and I had to become re-
sponsible for myself. At first you have the
thrill of the freedom of living on your own
[she shared a flat with other young danc-
ers], but then when you have to get up at
6am every day for ten hours of school-
work and dance classes, you realise you
can’t possibly put in as much work into
your school studies because so much
time is taken up with dance.”She continues, “In the wake of all the talk
about abuse, there should be more eyes
on these elite schools, whether it’s dance
or gymnastics or sports. There is a lot of
pressure – both physical and psycholog-
ical. And a lot of it is abusive, because
there is a lack of actual care for those
kids – the focus is purely on performing
to the highest standard at whatever cost.
You think you can take it because you
know it is expected of you, but I think I
was probably one of just a few girls at my
school who didn’t have an eating disor-
der. There was this constant air that you
weren’t ever quite good enough, that you
weren’t going to make it,” she says.“We lived in such a small world. All you
knew were other dancers. As I got older,
I made a vow to myself that I had to meet
other people. I forced myself to go out in
Stockholm. I would literally walk up to
girls saying, ‘Hello, you seem really nice.
Do you want to be my friend?’ It makes me
laugh when I think of it now, but it actu-
ally worked. I made friends with a bunch
of musicians and I opened up my world.
At the age of 18, I fell out of love with bal-
let. It was so hard. I had no money. I lived
in a flat with a minibar stocked with fish
fingers, lingonberry jam and frozen meat-
balls. My dream then was to act.”What happened next – after she was turned
down for drama school several times – is
pure Withnail and I. Vikander, who had won
small roles in Swedish television shows,
landed a lead part in Pure, which won her
a slew of awards. Armed with this success,
she set off for England along with two
musician friends (Caroline Hjelt and Aino
Jawo, aka the Swedish electropop duo Ico-
na Pop). They found an apartment on Por-
tobello Road in London’s Notting Hill, and
all set about furthering their careers.“It was a tough time, but it was a big
time,” Vikander says with a slight smile.
“We had no money. We had a great ad-
dress but the apartment was so bad:
dirty, cold and like something from a
different time. One night, we came home
and there were rats in the kitchen. We
often had to share a bed and wear as
many clothes as possible because the
heating didn’t really work. I went to audi-
tions and found my way around London.
At that point I thought, ‘I am Swedish, no
one will have ever heard of me. Please
let me get some work here.’ I never even
thought of America. My main worry was
my money running out and that we lived
in a flat with rats.”She laughs. “We still talk about that
now, and with Tove Lo [the Swedish
singer, another friend], who would come
and visit. We joke about it, but these
were girls I had walked up to a few years
before and asked to be my friends. Now
they are my family.”There are times when her success makes
her cry. “I miss my friends,” she says.
“I have sat with my girlfriends and told
them my biggest fear is that I will lose
contact with them because of my work.
They just laugh at me and say, ‘It’s not
going to happen.’ We do this thing now
where we have a meal together on Skype.
We sit down with our food and a bottle of
wine and we all talk and eat.”Vikander has few worries now. With an
Oscar, a talented husband and scripts
piling up at her door, she is in the sweet
spot of her life. She is a big advocate for
equal rights and is currently working to
link up Swedish female artists who have
spoken about abuse under the #silence-
action banner, to the Time’s Up cam-
paign. “It is so important, so humbling
that women are speaking out and speak-
ing up. I would never identify in any oth-
er way than as a feminist. I am a woman
raised by a woman.”Scan Magazine | Cover Feature | Alicia Vikander
58 | Issue 115 | August 2018