The director who Stellan Skarsgård would never turn down working with: “It’s a treat”
Hollywood runs on nepotism, but some families really have a special talent that runs through their blood, subsequently spawning various successful stars spanning generations. At the head of the Skarsgård family is Stellan Skarsgård, with seven of his children dedicating their careers to the arts.
While Alexander Skarsgård has appeared in everything from Big Little Lies to Godzilla vs Kong and Bill Skarsgård has played various horror villains in the likes of IT and Nosferatu, their father has been in the business since the late 1960s. The actor appeared in a wide array of titles as he built up his career, including the erotic film Anita: Swedish Nymphet and the acclaimed drama The Simple-Minded Murderer. However, it wasn’t until the 1990s that he began to receive more widespread recognition.
Not one to shy away from a provocative role, Skarsgård has often appeared in controversial movies that test the boundaries of the audience, which is perhaps why he found a kindred spirit in a certain director whom he would never turn down working with. An actor is always lucky when they find a filmmaker they can collaborate with multiple times, like Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro or Laura Dern and David Lynch. Sometimes, you just find someone who gets you and becomes a true friend as well as an artistic partner.
For Skarsgård, that person is Lars von Trier, the highly contentious filmmaker who is equally as adored as he is hated. The creator typically explores extreme violence and sex, often interlinking the two, with Skarsgård making his first appearance in a von Trier film in 1996 with a role in Breaking the Waves. Alongside Emily Watson, Skarsgård gave a fantastic performance, and within a year, he’d teamed up with the director once again, this time for the television series The Kingdom II.
The actor has also appeared in other projects by the filmmaker, like Dancer in the Dark and Melancholia, but one of his most unforgettable turns is arguably his role in Nymphomaniac. The final scene, a pivotal moment between Skarsgård’s Seligman and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Joe, is truly harrowing, but the actor never had any doubts about the ideas proposed by the director.
He told Collider: “He said, ‘My next film will be a porno film, Stellan, and I want you to play the male lead in it’. I said, ‘Yeah, of course, Lars’. ‘But, you will not get to fuck,’ he said. I said, ‘That’s fine. I’ll be there anyway’. ‘And you will show your dick in the end, and it will be very floppy,’ he said. ‘No problem,’ I said. That’s how he introduced the project to me, and then he wrote it. He called me a couple of times, when he was writing, whenever he had a funny idea to talk about”.
Clearly, Skarsgård puts his full trust in the filmmaker, no matter how shocking or explicit the idea. But there’s also an added layer of wanting to just spend time with someone you’re close to, so he will never turn down an opportunity.
“First of all, he’s a friend and I just like to hang with him. Making a film is a good excuse to be together… I’m also really happy on his set. I have fun working with him. It’s a treat, whatever the material. The end product is not my problem. That’s his problem,” the actor concluded.
