European Films

Though we have less than ten minutes together and I am probably the fiftieth journalist he is meeting today, Gustaf sits down and looks at me with a friendly curiosity, his eyes peeking out from under his army cap. My first question immediately puts him at ease: "What unites the Shooting Stars? Er... they are all European? It’s hard to say, man," he says with a US accent in his English, throwing out the first of many colloquialisms during our conversiation -- though he soon proves to be a thinker as well as a talker. Skarsgård continues: "We’re all Europeans. We can travel really far without travelling so far, you know? It’s lots of small countries with really different cultures; it’s hard to say what we have in common except that we’re all Europeans and I like that fact". 

 

Being the "son of" is certainly quite a unique position for any young actor, since it immediately grabs people's attention but might also fix the idea of him in people's mind sight unseen. I want to know what he'd like people to about him if they encountered a work of his and they'd never heard about any actor named Skarsgård: "I don’t really want people to know stuff about me personally; that’s my private life and I try to separate that [from my work]. What I would like them to know is the work I do: the movies I make, the plays I’m in. That’s what I want people to know and see. If they see a movie with me then I’d like them to come and watch me on stage, or the other way around. That is more important than me as a person”.

Gustaf’s encounters with the press have not always yielded the results he expected. Says the 27-year-old: "I’ve read so many articles about myself and thought ‘this is such a wrong picture of me’. I don’t recognise myself at all". Going on step further, Skarsgård philosophises: "This also affects me and the way I read interviews with other people as well. It is very easy to define yourself just by the opinions of other people. I try to let go of that kind of thinking. I don’t know a person until I know the person. Until then, I don’t want to define them for myself".

 

Though most famous for his film work, Skarsgård is also an accomplished stage actor and has played a large variety of roles. "There is no single film that I’ve made that represents all [the facets] of my work, because only all of it represents all of it," explains Skarsgård. After a short pause in which he seems to rack his brains for a film that might offer a good entry point into his work as a whole, he says: "I was in this movie, Evil, and I really liked to play that character". With a devilish grin, he adds: "Very evil. That’s probably the movie that has been seen by most people. It was nominated for an Oscar".

 

Certainly that role was his breakthrough role on film and it remains the most widely seen film with Skarsgård to date. On the perhaps impertinent question of whether the character he plays is very much removed from his own, he answers: "I’d certainly hope so," before belting out a guttural laugh of genuine glee at the thought of being as evil as Otto, his character in Ondskan (Evil). "No, no, no, not at all!" he continues, adding by way of explanation: "Well, the tendencies… let’s say we all have the tendencies of everyone inside of us, you know. There’s an embryo of these emotions. They’re not really suppressed because if you suppressed them that’s when they will become an issue. With that character I really tried to focus on his own insecurity and his need to suppress other people. So I fixed myself on the insecurity [issue] and suppressed that instead by being evil".

 

Finding his ideal project for the future would very much depend on a gut reaction. Says Skarsgård: "Well, that would be if I read the script and I just went: ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck, yeah!’ The script is the only thing I can go by. [It works] if I can feel that urge. If I can turn on or rather get turned on by the project. And that could be anything; a small part in a crazy movie or a crazy part in a small movie or whatever. You can get turned on by different aspects of the project as well: by the director you want to work with, by a great character or a good story or a good cause even. Whatever it is that makes you go yeah, yeah, yeah".

 

After several years in the theatre as a contract player, Skarsgård is without work when I meet him in Berlin [he has since signed on for several film projects, see his filmography above]. "I’m not working on anything now that makes me go yeah, yeah, yeah," says the actor. "I’ve got a few film projects coming up now but we’re not done with the negotiations yet so I can’t really talk about it. It’s still in an embryonic kind of state".

 

There is something on the horizon, however that has the young Skarsgård all excited: "The next thing that really makes me go yeah, yeah, yeah is a play I’m going to do next winter in Stockholm. It’s easier to go yeah, yeah, yeah when you read a play for the theatre. It’s a contemporary play but it’s an adaptation of an old, famous Swedish novel. It’s going to be good".