LIVE 24-SEVEN “ 14
WHAT’S FASCINATING ABOUT HIS STORY IS YOU SEE HOW MORALLY COMPLEX AND DIFFICULT IT IS
very interesting that it was set in Hamburg and it was very interesting to see the devastation and the horrors of war on both sides. I feel like a lot of stories that take place during this era are very black and white – it’s very much the evil Germans versus the good Allied forces and then in order to not paint it with too broad a brush they throw in a token ‘good’ German. But it’s usually not psychologically very interesting and what fascinates me is how can a country in central Europe, with a population of almost 80 million people, let this happen? How could this happen? What went wrong? Because I don’t believe that all these Germans were born evil. It’s too easy and I think it’s dangerous to think of it in that way because then history might repeat itself. If you don’t realise that this can happen in any society under the wrong circumstances then you are being very naïve and I think that’s very dangerous. By saying ‘we’re the good guys and those were the bad guys, that will never happen again’ is just delusional.
Skarsgård is the son of esteemed actor Stellan Skarsgård, born in Stockholm, Sweden he first acted as a child and returned to acting after serving in the Swedish military.
He’s played Sgt Brad Colbert in the acclaimed mini series Generation Kill and starred as vampire Eric Northman in the hugely popular True Blood. He won a Golden Globe for his performance opposite Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon in the TV series Big Little Lies and recently starred as Israeli secret agent Gadi in the BBC’s acclaimed mini series The Little Drummer Girl. His films include Diary of a Teenage Girl, War on Everyone, The Legend of Tarzan, Mute, The Hummingbird Project and Hold the Dark amongst others. In this interview he talks about learning German – or not as the case maybe, how lovely Keira and Jason were to work with and how the contemporary theme of the film makes it relevant for life today…
Why this one? What hooked you in? There were a lot of things. My friend Alicia Vikander worked with James (Kent, director) Testament of Youth. She is a dear friend of mine and she had a lovely time with him and spoke very highly of him. And obviously there was the script. I fell in love with the story and the character. I read quite a few World War Two stories, and post WWII stories, but this felt very different and I thought it was
And how is this story different? What’s fascinating about his story is you see how morally complex and difficult it is. And playing a guy like Stefan Lubert who wasn’t a Nazi but he was also not part of the resistance. He is a flawed human being and he is carrying guilt about what happened. He has lost his wife and he blames himself for that. He lost his job – he was a very prominent architect before and during the war – and he now works in a factory as a steel press operator and he has lost his house. And in a way he has lost his daughter. She is still alive but she also blames him for what has happened. So Lubert is a broken man, a man who is trying to hold on to the edge of the cliff of civility in a way, and he is a very dignified and proud man and so it’s very humbling for him to be in this situation. And then this couple show up and he is incredibly grateful that he gets to stay in the house because he assumes, as it was in most cases, that they would be sent to a camp. So the fact that they get to stay in an attic in the safety of their own home, he can’t believe his luck. But that also creates a friction because he feels that Rachael resents him and blames him for what happened during the war and the loss of her child. And she’s a philistine, she doesn’t appreciate fine art, and he’s from the Bauhaus movement, he’s very progressive and cares about architecture, art and music. And this woman arrives and she makes fun of this and questions him about paintings on the walls that she doesn’t know anything about and she doesn’t appreciate the artistic value of it. And that creates tension between them in the beginning of the movie. So I thought it was very complex and very interesting. And that dynamic is very interesting - this complexity of Stefan Lubert who slowly falls in love with this woman from the other side and they have this shared connection through their grief and their loss. It’s about acknowledging the suffering of the other side - acknowledging that there are civilians on the other side who are suffering and hurting and ones who have died. There are people who are going through the exact same thing as you are going through.
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
CE L EBRI T Y INTERVI EW AL EXANDER S KARSGARD
“
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164
