Alicia Vikander: ‘For those who’re depicting an abusive relationship, you’ll be able to’t shrink back’

To get into the mindset of her newest character, Henry VIII’s sixth and closing spouse, Catherine Parr, Alicia Vikander would put in her AirPods between takes, alternating between classical music and “loads” of techno. “It gave me a little bit of bodily stress,” she recollects. “One thing that by no means stopped, like a heartbeat that all the time goes a bit too quick.” Jude Legislation, who performs her on-screen husband, bought into character by dousing himself within the scent of blood, faecal matter and sweat. “It was insufferable – like rotten fish,” says Vikander. “It was a really current reminder of what it will need to have been prefer to enter the identical room as Henry VIII throughout that point.”

Karim Aïnouz’s good-looking, visceral movie Firebrand is a distinctly fashionable tackle Tudor historical past, getting underneath the pores and skin of what it might need been prefer to be married to somebody who might at any level name to your beheading. For a lot of viewers, it’s going to present an introduction to the considerably ignored historic determine of Parr, the primary girl to be revealed underneath her personal identify in England. It additionally marks a shift in the best way Henry VIII has historically been portrayed: much less of a vigorous womaniser, and extra of a home abuser susceptible to petty cruelties and violent temper swings. “For those who’re displaying an abusive relationship, wherein you’re afraid to your life day-after-day, you’ll be able to’t shrink back,” says Vikander. “It was fairly grim. There would have been 300 males within the palace and about 12 girls, who had been confined to 2 chambers. Simply imagining these girls, by no means with the ability to go exterior – it dawns on you emotionally, what that may be like.”

Lots of the themes in Firebrand are depressingly related to the current day: plague, warfare, tyrants, girls being diminished to their reproductive organs. At its coronary heart, it’s a battle of cause and tolerance versus violence and hatred, a dynamic acquainted to anybody following politics at the moment. “I don’t suppose folks have modified,” says Vikander. “It’s perhaps not essentially the most optimistic, however I used to be studying an article about how wars recur and it’s all a cycle – the truth that it ought to return is sort of inevitable. However every little thing is exponential in the intervening time.”

Whereas they had been filming, King Charles III’s coronation passed off in opposition to a backdrop of worldwide unrest and the price of dwelling disaster. “It was attention-grabbing, as a result of he got here out, [wearing] the cape, and we mentioned: ‘Wow, see how completely different that’s from actuality.’ And that made us suppose: why would we belief these work which are 500 years previous? Clearly, it’s theatre. It’s about creating a picture that you simply need to ship out for the folks, or to achieve energy.” Somewhat than believing the projection, the movie peels again the layers of veneer to get to one thing darker and recognisably human.

Maybe there’s something cyclical about cinema as effectively: considered one of Vikander’s earliest movie roles, 2012’s A Royal Affair, equally adopted an idealistic younger girl married to a merciless and boorish Danish king, and who with the help of a like-minded lover makes an attempt to steer the dominion’s politics in in a extra progressive course. Within the years since, she has performed a dizzying array of roles, from Gloria Steinem to Lara Croft, interval dramas to cutting-edge sci-fi.

It’s straightforward to see why so many administrators have been drawn to Vikander: on display screen, she shifts effortlessly between steeliness and vulnerability, conveying deep emotion by way of micro-expressions; her background in ballet exhibits in her bodily self-possession. There have been just a few years in the course of the mid-2010s when she was ubiquitous: in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, because the troublingly human AI Ava; in The Danish Woman, for which she gained a greatest supporting actress Academy Award; and Jason Bourne, taking part in an formidable CIA hacker.

We’re talking in a restaurant in north London, the place Vikander can be stationed for the following few months, making ready for a brand new venture. Since 2017 she has lived in Lisbon, Portugal, along with her husband, the actor Michael Fassbender. “We used to fulfill folks on the pub on Sundays right here,” she says, looking on the leafy avenue. “Then in Lisbon, it was fairly wild sitting on a Sunday at a seashore membership in February. It was like: ‘Oh, look, we’re doing the identical factor, nevertheless it seems to be a bit completely different.’ Particularly with children.” In a latest interview, Vikander revealed she had given start to her second little one, which has been reported as a “secret being pregnant” in some shops. “It was the strike after which I used to be simply working,” she says casually. “I’ve all the time been very personal, within the sense that I don’t discuss loads about my household. I imply, I didn’t make an announcement.”

As we speak, she is in off-duty glam: white T-shirt, no make-up, assertion gold jewelry. For an A-lister, she seems remarkably comfy along with her environment; if anybody recognises her, they don’t let on. “Most of my associates are usually not actors or within the trade in any respect,” she says. “That has undoubtedly been actually great typically, as a result of this trade may be fairly overwhelming, and it’s been good to have a life that may be very a lot away from that.

“However clearly having a accomplice and a husband who is aware of it greater than anybody, and who is aware of me higher than anybody – it’s good having somebody who understands you and the scenario you’re in and shares it.” How has it been balancing work and household life round their respective schedules? “It’s gone fairly effectively, truly. We’ve been collectively nearly 10 years and we are inclined to not work on the identical time. We’re extra like a circus household, all the time on the transfer.”

When she’s not working, she likes to journey and organise social occasions. “That’s my character. Individuals know I’m not working once I host dinners” – she does a implausible Swedish model of bouillabaisse with plenty of saffron and do-it-yourself aioli – “or I make plans for enjoyable issues to do. I actually do care about these relationships and holding the folks I like near me.” Life in Lisbon sounds idyllic: “Thirty minutes from the town centre, you’re on a seashore that appears like nowhere else in Europe – you’ll be able to’t see the place the seashore ends each methods. There’s just some fish shacks.”

You get a way that Vikander is bemused however not significantly fazed by the general public’s curiosity in her life (“That’s simply how the world works – I assume by now I’m considerably used to it”); every query is tackled with enthusiasm and a brisk effectivity. Born in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1988, she was on stage from an early age: at seven, she starred in a musical written by Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson; aged eight, she gained a kids’s lip-sync expertise present. Her dad and mom separated when she was small and she or he was largely raised by her mom, the stage actor Maria Fahl Vikander.

“I had a extremely nice childhood. I imply, it was very completely different from this,” she gestures to the imposing buildings round us. “I grew up in a studio flat with my mom and she or he launched me to artwork from a really younger age. And regardless that we didn’t have a lot cash to do issues – we might by no means journey once I was a child – she did take me to the theatre, she launched me to books and music – I didn’t know that she was doing it, as a result of it was simply what was at house. However as an grownup, I can see what a wealthy upbringing my mom gave me, in that sense.”

Aged 15, Vikander moved to Stockholm on her personal to coach with the Royal Swedish Ballet faculty, spending a summer season on the American Academy of Ballet in New York. After an harm in her late teenagers obliged her to sideline dance in favour of appearing, she starred in a tv sequence directed by Tomas Alfredson. She then utilized to drama faculty, however was turned down twice. She was starting to contemplate a profession in legislation when she was forged because the lead in 2010 Swedish movie Pure, adopted shortly afterwards by a task in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina (Legislation was a co-star). Wanting again on the rejections now, does she really feel vindicated? “To be sincere, I didn’t really feel that. The second time I used to be there, doing exams for every week, a part of me felt: ‘Possibly this isn’t for me.’ There was simply a part of me that was questioning.”

She seems to be momentarily misplaced. “These days, there’s so many actors which are self-taught, or taught by way of the folks they work with – they change into your lecturers. So, if I had gone [to drama school], I wouldn’t be right here.” If her youthful self might see Vikander now, what would she have fabricated from the girl she has change into? She thinks for just a few seconds. “I feel she might need been amazed by how content material and calm and blissful I appear, contemplating. It’s additionally a part of being in your mid-20s in comparison with now – there have been so many extra worries I carried with me then.”

Her mom died in 2022, a loss Vikander clearly nonetheless feels keenly. “It’s good to speak about her,” she says quietly. “And with my children, I really feel like she’s round.” By way of the a long time, her mom saved diaries, every detailing a 12 months in her life; she left two to Alicia in her will. “Studying them was fairly wild. She wrote virtually day-after-day, so to learn a 12 months of my mom’s life, the place she’s 24, 31, offers you an perception into your personal mother or father that’s past something. It’s so personal. She informed me when she was alive that she was going to burn all of it, and clearly I learn it feeling: ‘This was by no means meant to be learn by anybody.’” Her eyes widen. “So to get that near her, and even being nearly 10 years older than she was in considered one of them… It felt like a TV sequence, as thrilling and thrilling.” She grins. “She even had an index of the fellows she had been assembly through the years, so I might return and verify who it was.”

She is on good phrases along with her father, psychiatrist Svante Vikander; by way of him, she has 5 half-siblings. Has his career been helpful for her, each as an actor and in life, when it comes to determining why human beings act the best way they do? “I’ve had lengthy talks with my dad since I used to be very younger. He’s so all in favour of life and in folks: he makes folks discuss, as a result of he’s a superb listener. I do like to speak with him about human beings and feelings and what folks do. And such as you mentioned, that’s loads of what I do for a dwelling as effectively. So I undoubtedly suppose we meet there.”

Partly by way of her father’s ardour for science fiction, Vikander developed an curiosity in synthetic intelligence. Ten years on from starring in Ex Machina, wherein her Ava was one of the vital devastating, and chilling, portrayals of AI on display screen, I’m wondering what her ideas on the topic at the moment are. “It’s occurring, and it’s evolving,” she says, rising animated. “I examine it loads. I hearken to consultants and podcasts to attempt to sustain. Every part will look very completely different in solely 5 to 10 years, so I’m making an attempt to determine the best way to navigate these adjustments, the best way to deliver up kids in these occasions. I’m curious and I attempt to be as optimistic as potential. Clearly, it’s all about ensuring issues don’t find yourself within the incorrect fingers.”

On one podcast she listened to, the dialogue turned to what these adjustments might imply for the way forward for schooling. “It’s not like we have to memorise something. In concept, very quickly our mind might have on the spot entry ” – she snaps her fingers – “to the whole thing of the web. It’s like asking a mouse if it desires to be as clever as a human being. [On the podcast,] he was saying, if all of us are that rather more clever, everybody [else will be too]. We will’t even think about what we might then collectively do as a human species.”

That sounds barely terrifying.

“I discover that attention-grabbing, since you say you’re frightened of that, and I’ve a part of me that finds it fairly thrilling as effectively. Particularly in that concept, as a result of a mouse would have a tough time to think about what the intelligence of a human being is.”

The 12 months after Ex Machina, Vikander starred in The Danish Woman, a movie about one other topic that has change into more and more divisive over the previous decade. “It’s unimaginable – just a few years after that movie got here out, it’s change into fairly dated,” she muses (her co-star Eddie Redmayne has expressed remorse at taking the function of transgender painter Lili Elbe, stating {that a} trans actor ought to have been forged). Nonetheless, she is proud that the movie helped unfold consciousness and understanding of the subject to a large viewers: “Individuals who have been transitioning, trans women and men that I met – it’s been good to listen to that some had used the movie as a manner in, to point out their dad and mom. If it may very well be a part of that dialogue, it’s great.” (She retains her Oscar for it within the household’s nation home in France, on a shelf in a downstairs screening room.)

After a comparatively quiet few years, with the pandemic adopted by the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes, and the start of her sons, Vikander’s schedule is now busier than ever. She performed a mysterious, unsettling twin function in The Inexperienced Knight, a stylised A24 adaptation of 14th-century chivalric poem Sir Gawain and the Inexperienced Knight, alongside Dev Patel. In 2022, she took on the titular, catsuit-wearing function in Olivier Assayas’s meta HBO sequence Irma Vep – primarily based on his personal movie from 1996 starring Maggie Cheung, in flip impressed by Louis Feuillade’s 1915-16 silent movie sequence Les Vampires – wherein she performed a calmly fictionalised model of herself.

After appearing alongside Fassbender in 2016’s The Mild Between Oceans, they are going to each seem in Na Hong-jin’s Hope, at the moment in post-production (Taylor Russell and Squid Recreation’s Hoyeon co-star). How was working collectively once more? “We had been extraordinarily excited – wehad been trying to discover one thing to do collectively. However clearly, it wanted to be one thing the place we each needed to do our separate roles and be a part of this particular venture. And the thought of doing one thing in Korea, at the very least for me, was extraordinarily thrilling.”

She can be working with Assayas and Legislation once more on The Wizard of the Kremlin, an adaptation of Giuliano da Empoli’s novel a few fictionalised spin physician, seemingly impressed by Vladimir Putin consigliere Vladislav Surkov. “It’s a few very attention-grabbing time in Russian historical past,” says Vikander. “The 90s in Moscow will need to have been extraordinary to stay by way of.” Advised from the Russian perspective, the story depicts the rise of an authoritarian chief. “It is a story the place perhaps, culturally, we predict: ‘Oh, that is different, this occurred some other place.’ And you then realise, no, it simply occurred 15 years earlier [than in the west]. So who’re we to criticise something, contemplating that that’s very a lot a part of western politics and historical past in the intervening time?” Later this 12 months, she stars alongside Cate Blanchett and Charles Dance in Rumours, a black comedy about G7 leaders who get misplaced within the woods (she performs the secretary common of the European Fee).

The AirPods will most likely come out once more. “I actually take pleasure in this time at first of a venture – it’s that feeling of past love that I all the time have when there’s one thing new and thrilling, and I don’t know the way I’m going to deal with it but.” There’s something magical about being on set, she says. “You’re in a scene and immediately every little thing clicks. And nobody actually is aware of how or why that occurred simply then, however everybody within the room is conscious of it. I assume that intangible factor and the thriller of it’s nonetheless what attracts all of us to return for it. That’s most likely why I do that.”

Firebrand is in UK and Irish cinemas from 6 September