Alexander Skarsgård Café interview - translation
Translation of Alexander's December issue Café interview, by me, nemo_88. I did this for my friend queen_haq and I think she posted parts of this at another community, but here's the full thing and with a few minor edits.
I used these scans by starsystems - huge thanks!
I apologize for any awkward phrasings or mistakes.
Please don't take out without credit. This took me hours to put together.
[cover] Skarsgård!
Hollywood tour with Sweden's hottest actor.
[p.20]
[caption] At the top
"Cool articles! Where have squeezed me in in this list?" Mr Skarsgård, the long interview about your successful life in Hollywood starts on page 54. You were photographed by Tobias Lundkvist
54 Alexander Skarsgård
Early mornings and late night with the True Blood star.
by Martin Gelin
[p. 54]
After success series True Blood and Generation Kill, Alexander Skarsgård is suddenly playing in a whole new league. Now more prestigious projects are waiting: from big picture Straw Dogs to comedy Puss [trans note: "Kiss" in Swedish]. Martin Gelin shadows Sweden's latest Hollywood star during a normal day in Los Angeles with crazy agent meetings, late bar rounds, and gossip-thriving bloggers.
[p. 55]
It's going well now
Alexander Skarsgård, photographed for Café in Los Angeles. He moved here permanently two years ago and is now on the edge of Hollywood's absolute elite.
[headline]
BLOODED TOOTH
[trans note: to get blooded tooth is a Swedish expression meaning you have gotten the feel for something, wanting more.]
[p. 56]
[pullquote]
True Blood is a piece of cake compared to Generation Kill. During Generation Kill we filmed 12 hours a day for seven months
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[sidebar] Vampires, videos and weapons
1. Skarsgård with Lady Gaga in the video to her song Paparazzi, directed by Jonas Åkerlund.
2. As viking vampire Eric Northman in True Blood. Skarsgård got awarded in the category "Best Villain" in TV channel Spike's yearly science fiction and horror gala Scream.
3. Picture from the recording of Generation Kill in Africa 2007.
4. Alexander in upcoming Johan Kling-comedy Puss, where he plays along with brother Gustaf, among others.
5. In Tarik Saleh's animated movie Metropia Alex is doing one of the voices next to Vincent Gallo, Juliette Lewis - and a certain Stellan Skarsgård.
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Alexander Skarsgård's silver Audi is racing down Sunset Boulevard, breathtakingly fast. We go by West Hollywood's night clubs, juice bars, Scientology churches and vegan cafes. In the back window of the car, a large rectangular sign with a familiar green text is saying "Bajen rocks!" [trans note: Bajen is a nickname for Swedish soccer team Hammarby IF]. We have fifteen minutes to get to Beverly Hills, but traffic is slow.
- Damn! I hate being late. When I grew up my dad was really strict with these things. If you were 5 minutes late for dinner you had to have a really good excuse.
Alexander has said he doesn't want this to be a "Vincent Chase-article" about his presumed glamorous life in Hollywood. He claims, like actors usually do, that there isn't such a life.
- Really, I just work, most of the time.
But as usual in LA, reality tends to blend with fiction. Alexander is having a meeting with the agency Endeavor, founded by, among others, Ari Emanuel - who Ari Gold's character in Entourage is based upon. Most of the scenes from the agency is recorded at their real office, located on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
When we arrive Alexander is four, five minutes late. He bounces out the car, throws the keys to a valet and we take the elevator up to Endeavor, which looks exactly like the TV show - spacious offices in matte steal, frosted glass and white furniture. Five girls, who probably work part-time as models, are lines up symmetrically in the reception and answers phone calls in head sets.
Two Endeavor guys with expensive-looking hair, black suits and pastel shirts greets Alexander, gives him a friendly punch in the shoulder and imitates a famous scene out of Entourage.
- You know how we're going to present you, huh? "Apple! Pepsi! Alexander! We're gonna make you a brand name!" [trans note: sorry, I don't know the exact words of this scene]
Last spring Skarsgård's agent lost her job at one of the city's medium-sized agencies, which forced Alexander to question if he should keep working with her at a smaller agency, or look for some of the larger ones. Thus, he spends the week having a half a dozen meetings at different agencies - and admits it's a grateful ego-trip to go from office to office where everyone tries to convince him how good he is and why they must work together in the future.
But despite Endeavor's "role" in Entourage it isn't the most prestigious agency around. It is a relatively new firm which has found it's niche in younger, hipper actors. They are the front line, but might not have the widest network or the most experienced personnel.
A couple of years ago, Endeavor would have been the perfect home for Alexander, but a lot has happened in his career lately. He's had the two largest roles in prestigious TV channel HBO's vampire series True Blood and Iraq series Generation Kill.
Among his upcoming movies, Straw Dogs stands out, a remake of Sam Peckinpah's classic from 1972. In it, Alexander works with Kate Bosworth (who plays his ex-girlfriend) and James Woods (who plays his football coach). During a break in shooting he flew to Visby [trans note: largest city on Swedish island Gotland] to take part in Johan Kling's new movie Puss [trans note: Swedish: "Kiss"].
Right now, Skarsgård is balancing on the edge of that exclusive group of actors whose names are, that's right, brand names, and he's aiming higher when it's time to switch agent. He wants to end up in one of the largest agencies.
- They have always carried a lot of weight, they make things happen, make sure you meet the right directors and producers. At the same time you want an agency that makes you its priority. If you're in the same agency as Tom Cruise there's a risk of ending up at the bottom. I'm guess I'm not really interested in that side of the industry, I have to trust my manger and my gut feeling. Like, "Nah, that guy felt like too much of a flashy LA agent"
Earlier in the day, we ate lunch at The Hungry Cat, a fantastic seafood restaurant that - diagnostically for this city - is hidden behind a boring shopping mall. Alexander is dazed, despite it being one in the afternoon. He has recorded a scene for True Blood all night.
- We started at 11 at night and kept going until five in the morning. Since it's a vampire show, all outdoor scenes needs to be recorded at night. The scene we shot was kind of fun, because we were talking Swedish. It was a flashback to the Viking days and the director wanted to do it genuinely so they found a professor from Chicago who's an expert on how people spoke in the 900s. You really don't understand a word, it sounds like Icelandic.
Can you tell us a line?
- No I can't, haha. It would sound like crap.
How's the shooting conditions during True Blood compared to Generation Kill?
- It's a piece of cake compared to Generation Kill. Sure, we might work 16 hours straight sometimes, but then you're off and can chill around for two days. Generation Kill was a 145 days shoot in Africa and we shot 142 of them, 12 hours a day. I lived like that for seven months.
How did it really happened when you started your acting career in Hollywood?
>>
[p. 57]
[caption] Calm street
Skarsgård has played a lot of alpha males thus far and is hoping for less macho-like parts in the future. Preferably in a Gus van Sant film.
[p. 58]
Good head on his shoulders
A flashback scene in True Blood put Alexander's language abilities to test. The lines - written by a language professor from Chicago - were meant to sound like Swedish from the 900s. "You don't understand a word", Skarsård says.
[p. 59]
[pull quote]
"Dad was a wine-drinking bohemian who sat naked, smoking in the kitchen. But as I got older I realized the positive sides to it."
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[sidebar] When Skarsgård met Zlatan [trans note: Zlatan Ibrahimović, Swedish soccer player]
During Barcelona's training camp in Los Angeles earlier this year, Alexander said hi to Zlatan - and hung up a Bajen decorated Swedish flag. "It was declared early this morning that Ibrahimović is leaving Barcelona for playing in Hammarby", Skarsgård jokingly wrote in a mass email afterwards. "The contract means that Barca [trans note: short for Barcelona] gets Freddy Söderberg [trans note: another Swedish soccer player] as payment for Zlatan, while Zlatan personally gets 200 SEK a week in rikskuponger [trans note: coupons used in Sweden instead of cash, mostly at restaurants. That's approx 30 USD] as well as free entrance at Södermalm's pub Gröne jägaren."
--------------------
[sidebar] Voices about Alexander Skarsgård
Anders "Moneybrother" Wendin
Artist and friend
- I hated Alexander all my life because he was so good-looking. But then I met him seven years ago at Gotland [trans note: island off the east coast of Sweden] and it was impossible not to like him. A crazy intelligent, good person. A couple of weeks ago he did a mighty powerful thing. He invited me to the Bajen-AIK game at Råsunda. [trans note: Bajen and AIK are rivaling soccer teams, Råsunda AIK's stadium]. Hammarby got killed. After that we were offered a ride by a guy from Bajen, but Alexander insisted we take the subway. We ended up in a subway car full of AIK fans, shouting cheers. I wore neutral clothes but Alex wore green and white [trans note: Bajen's colors] head to toe. Suddenly, the car got quiet. Then all of a sudden Alexander started shouting Bajen cheers as loud as he could. All by himself. I thought we would die. Everyone in the subway car was staring at us. At first, it was pure hatred, but after a couple of stops the atmosphere got friendly. Gnagarna [trans note: nickname for AIK fans] started shouting "Bajenpigs, beer and cocaine" [trans note: common anti-Bajen cheer - which rhymes in Swedish] ... and Alexander shouted the same things back.
--------------------
How did it really happened when you started your acting career in Hollywood?
I was here on vacation ten years ago, when dad was filming. His manager heard I was an actor back in Sweden. She suggested I would try some auditions and got me some. The first one I did was for Zoolander - and I got that part. Then I got my own agent. After that I was in Sweden for two years and did theater, but got no interesting movie scripts. In 2004, I started commuting between Stockholm and LA. I thought, if I already have representation here I might as well try.
Were you here a lot with Stellan as a kid?
- He used to bring the whole family to movie shoots, so we traveled a lot, but he hasn't actually recorded that much here in LA. He shot in Holland, Scotland, Ireland, France, Greece, Cambodia, Hungary... He wasn't an international actor when I grew up. It wasn't until Breaking the waves that it happened, and then with Good Will Hunting after that, but at that point I'd already moved out. I have younger siblings that are almost 20 years younger than me, so they've lived an entirely different life with him, they've experienced the Hollywood glamour much more. When I was young he mostly worked at Dramaten [trans note: the Royal theater in Stockholm]. I never saw him because he had rehearsals at night. If you wanted to meet dad, you had to run around the catacombs of Dramaten.
Alexander Skarsgård's way of speaking reminds me a little bit of people I've known in Stockholm, people who have grown up in culture aware families on Södermalm [trans note: neighborhood and island in central Stockholm]. His speech is jerky, while relaxed, with a lot of slang and curses, all while quoting Ibsen and Tolstoy in the blink of an eye.
Behind the easygoing söderkisen [trans note: person from Södermalm] in a Bajen hat [trans note: Bajen is a nickname for Swedish soccer team Hammarby IF] there is a much more contemplating, culturally experienced actor who seem to have spent years and years pondering his profession, his legacy and his own identity.
Children of celebrities often emanate a lot of complexes and get an unbearable need for attention, but Alexander shows no signs of it. He generously offers tales of "dad" and denies it was Stellan who opened the first door here in Hollywood, by getting him an agent.
You said in Café last year that you were jealous of your buddies who had "normal" parents with nine-to-five jobs and a Saab. Were you thinking of getting a more conventional career, and avoid the actor world?
- Yes. I did a few jobs as a children's actor, but never had any thought of it as a career. As I got older and started thinking of how my buddies and their parents were living, of status and those things, wearing the right jeans... Then I thought, what the hell, a red-wine-drinking theater-bohemian who's naked in the kitchen smoking? The buddies who had dads with shiny suits and drove a Saab 9000 and were home at night was much more attracting. It was tough, with dad always being away at night.
But?
- But as I got older I saw the positive sides to it, that there were a lot of creative and interesting people in my life, thanks to the discharged punks my dad dragged home.
You did your military service as a marine soldier - that feels like a reaction to the bohemian life, doesn't it? You basically get to choose yourself if you wanted to your military service or not.
- Sure, I actively sought that position. I was 19 and felt I could either go backpacking by train for 6 months, go to Bangkok to some cafe, or do this. But of course you ask yourself when you're lying buried in a swamp for four days: Why am I doing this? Especially when you got postcards from buddies in Australia who were hanging out with kangaroos. But looking back, I haven't regretted doing it for a second.
And then you went to New York. How was that?
- I was twenty and got into an acting school there. I had planned on living there for four years, studying. But then I met a girl in Sweden first summer break. So I dropped out of school and went home for love. She was 17 and I was 20. We didn't even know each other, we had only hung out for four weeks and had just fallen in love. It ended after four days.
You moved to LA permanently 2 years ago. Can you imagine yourself staying here?
- No. I feel comfortable as long as I'm working, the whole town is made up around the movie industry. It's a very creative environment. But I miss the intensity of regular cities. You don't see any people here, just cars. There are 15 million people in LA but you see more people on the streets of Skövde [trans note: Swedish small town] than here. There are good restaurants, cozy cafes, all of that, but the spontaneity disappears a bit when you have to take your car everywhere. You have to park all the time. Then you have dinner and you're like: shouldn't we have another bottle of wine? But you can't because you have to drive home.
Who do you hang out with here?
- Half the gang from Generation Kill, among others, they live here.
They are a little bit like your friends from military service?
- Yeah, it turns out that way. It was such a special experience being in the desert for seven months with these people, you had no one else.
What's the hardest thing to adjust to in LA apart from the driving?
- People can be kind of fleeting. There's a lot of "Great, we'll have lunch tomorrow then!" and then you're kind of Swedish saying "Okay, should we say 2pm?" But it never happens. A lot of stuff gets planned that never gets followed through, and you're not that accustomed to that. At the same time there's an awesome energy here. You're allowed to dream and have visions of doing things that might not follow the norm 100%, which people have a harder time accepting in Sweden. Everything that sticks out is considered a little bit frightening back home.
[p. 60]
[Pullquote]
"Alexander can really drink. If you try to keep up with him you end up with alcohol poisoning and embarrass yourself irrevocably. "
Talrik Saleh, director.
[caption] Chill style.
Skarsgård likes sober Swedish fashion brands and aren't too fond of the in Hollywood popular fashion with fringy suits and skull prints. "It gives me a headache. "
--------------------
After Alexander Skarsgård's meeting at Endeavor, he looks a little troubled. He explains that it went very well, but that's just the problem. That means he has to dump his old agent. He fingers his BlackBerry nervously and says that the conversation that awaits him will be "as hard as breaking up".
Alexander decides to meet his soon-to-be-ex-agent at a cafe in Beverly Hills and while waiting for her to show up we go comfort shopping at the department store Barney's across the street.
It's five floors of designer clothes, from traditional luxury brands to new, young designers. Marc Jacobs and Prada as well as Thom Browne and Band of Outsiders.
Alexander sophisticatedly finds the APC section on the fourth floor and fingers a marine blue, waist-long canvas jacket with a discreet manchester collar.
- It's like a Carhartt jacket for the upper class, he says and tries it on, pleased, in front of a mirror.
It's fancy, but the sleeves are a little too short. Not even a size XL is always big enough for 6'3 Alexander Skarsgård.
What do you think about the clothing style here in LA?
-There are hipsters at the rock clubs in Silverlake that look like those in New York or at (the rock club) Debaser in Stockholm. In Hollywood, there's a lot of money. Preferably, it should be very visible, and they go a little overboard. Instead of a regular suit jacket, they buy one with skulls on the back and large fringes hanging from the sleeves.
More is more.
- Exactly. They have to "toughen things up" a little, they want shirts that show that they aren't boring agent guys that sit in their offices all day, so it's important to have skulls on your back. There's a lot of Ed Hardy-fashion here, but it's not really my style. It gives me a headache.
What kind of clothes do you like yourself?
- In the same way as I can be judgmental about LA fashion, they probably think I dress super boring. I wouldn't say I'm conservative, but I probably have more of a Nordic style, straight and clean. I like Whyred, Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair, Acne, Raf Simons, Rick Owens.
Do you have a certain period of your life where you feel embarrassed about how you dressed?
- During one period I was rebelling against Sweden being so "just enough". I bought pink pants, a bunch of strings and, like, a kids' hat saying "Alexander". I wish I could say I was 14. But I was probably 21. Fuck, can we say 14?
Later at night we meet up a bunch of Alexander's acting friends from Generation Kill. Evan Wright - the Vanity Fair-journalist the TV series was based upon - has just released a new book and has an event at a bookstore at Farmer's Market.
He was present during the recordings in Africa and have kept in touch with the actors afterwards. Wright's new book, Hella Nation, is about USA's darker sides - he has spent time with neo-nazis, crystal meth druggies, porn stars and insane conspiracy theoretics.
At Barnes & Noble he reads aloud out of the book while the Generation Kill gang listens politely on front row. Afterwards we head to a restaurant nearby. Burritos and pitchers of beer are ordered. The conversation goes between the serious (acting careers going up and down) and the less serious (one of >>
[p. 61]
[pullquote]
The conversation goes between the serious and the less serious: one of the actors has "had sex with a dwarf in in Vegas"
--------------------
[sidebar] Voices about Alexander Skarsgård
Talrik Saleh
Director Metropia
- On the outside he looks pretty free of sorrows - he has a fantastic job in Hollywood, he's a tall guy all the girls want, a lot of guys envy him. But if there wasn't anything underneath he wouldn't get the parts he gets. He can play an ungrateful character, but you like him anyway, because it feels like there's something inside him that could break. A mysterious vulnerability. Another thing I like about Alexander is that he really can really drink! If you try to keep up with him you end up with alcohol poisoning and embarrass yourself irrevocably.
--------------------
[caption] No player
Alexander avoids the luxurious strips around Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. He rather hang out by the coast - or at the rock clubs in eastern Hollywood. "The indie scene there is amazing. Good music every night."
--------------------
The conversation goes between the serious (acting careers going up and down) and the less serious (one of the actors, not Alexander, brags about recently having "had sex with a dwarf in Las Vegas").
For the most part though, it's Evan Wright talking. He seems to enjoy that there is a journalist present and that everything that's said could thus be made public. He shares, teasingly and enthusiastically, among other things, details about Alexander's private life.
According to Wright Alexander is trying to act like a "complicated Swede" by "coming alone to parties and talking self-pitying about his hard life as a single." The level of truth of this is unclear. Alexander laughs, shrugs and says: "Sure..."
Later a girl arrives that looks like a young version of Audrey Hepburn. She came straight from a model shoot and sits down next to one of Alexander's friends, but is mostly using her BlackBerry. Evan Wright gets impatient and asks if she's seeing Alexander's buddy. Without looking up, she answers:
- Nah. We're just fucking.
In the car back home we talk about Alexander's dreams about the future. His two jobs for the respected HBO has lifted him to a whole new league in Hollywood.
- I actually got the part in True Blood before Generation Kill, but it took so long before we started recording that I did Generation Kill first. Then they called me again about True Blood when I was in Mozambique and did Generation Kill. Lucky for me, there was the script strike. Then True Blood was delayed and I could still make it. I was lucky.
Can you breathe a sigh of relief now, career-wise?
- No. I thought so at first when I got these two parts, that now I'm like... in it, But I still notice I have these thoughts about what will happen next. What do I do in six years? I guess you'll have to live with that uncertainty as long as you freelance.
What director would you most of all like to work with?
- Gus van Sant. Paranoid Park was so tremendously good, it hit me extremely hard. I'd love to play someone more insecure, someone less alpha male. It's been a lot of that.
Nearing fall, a couple of months after our interview in Los Angeles I call up Alexander when he's in Louisiana shooting the movie Straw Dogs. The part: another alpha male.
- I play Charlie, a football player who's the best in his team in college, a "jock" with a promising future. But he gets injured and has to stay in his small town as a carpenter. He's bitter that he didn't get to go. After a while his ex-girlfriend comes back with a new guy, an intellectual script writer from Hollywood. The movie is about how Charlie deals with his ex being with someone he sees as not a real man.
Straw Dogs is filmed in Shreveport, a medium-sized town in the middle of the classic American south. It's only a couple of hours from New Orleans, but culturally in another galaxy.
- Everything is about religion, football and guns, Alexanders states.
Compared to Hollywood, what was it like filming Johan Kling's movie Puss on Gotland?
- Big difference, of course. There's as many people making the food here in Louisiana, that is the entire production crew in a Swedish movie.
In Sweden Skarsgård has gotten used to being recognized, but these days it's the same in the USA. True Blood has had a successful summer and Alexander is these days known as his character "Eric" on the streets of LA.
This has both advantages and disadvantages. The day we're talking there's gossip about Alexander dating Evan Rachel Wood (also in True Blood) after the two of them have been spotted together in Louisiana. The blogger Perez Hilton wrote miserably that Skarsgård "deserves better". Alexander sighs.
- We're just friends from the show. It's the kind of garbage you have to live with.
Alexander has chosen a new agency now too. It isn't Endeavor or even the smaller agency his old agent used to work at, it's the giant Creative Artists Agency. They represent stars like George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, Bob Dylan and Shakira.
The conversation with his ex-agent is over and done with and it wasn't as hard as Alexander feared.
- She understood me. I mean... if I would have stayed at her agency it would have been like Zlatan [trans note: Zlatan Ibrahimović, Swedish soccer player] deciding to go to Brommapojkarna instead of Ajax after Malmö. [trans note: Brommapojkarna and Malmö are smaller Swedish soccer clubs, Ajax is a large soccer club in the Netherlands.]
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