“I made such bad films”: how softcore porn almost destroyed Stellan Skarsgård’s career
As much as nobody wants to imagine Stellan Skarsgård in a pornographic context, although we’re not here to judge anyone who does, he wouldn’t be where he is today without it.
And where he is today is comfortable with his lot as one of world cinema’s most in-demand veterans. A freshly minted first-time Academy Award nominee at the age of 74, Skarsgård hasn’t only enjoyed a stellar career that’s more than 50 years deep, but he’s built an entire acting dynasty.
It feels like you can barely turn around without bumping into a Skarsgård these days, whether it’s the patriarch appearing in multiple movies annually, or any one of his sons popping up onscreen, be it Alexander, Gustaf, Bill, or Valter, with six of his eight children following him into the family business.
These days, Skarsgård is content to pinball around the industry, lending his distinctive gravitas to everything from mega-budget Marvel Studios blockbusters and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels to acclaimed and awards-baiting independent dramas like Sentimental Value, never mind his multiple collaborations with Lars Von Trier.
It’s been a fascinating five decades, and that’s been true since the beginning, with the star admitting that his earliest forays in front of the camera almost ruined him for good. “My first film was this sex comedy called Strandhugg i somras in 1972,” he recalled to Vulture. “They ran out of money during the shoot. I still haven’t got paid for it.”
“I did a couple of soft-porn films,” Skarsgård continued. “The first one, Anita: Swedish Nymphet, I thought, ‘Oh, this is about a nymphomaniac, her psychological problems. OK, interesting’. And I did it. And I saw that it misses the point. But it doesn’t miss the point of her being a nymphomaniac. Then I did another one with open eyes.”
The “other one” was presumably 1974’s Swedish Sex Games, an inference we’re not inaccurately making based on the title. He didn’t have any problems using sexploitation to get his foot in the door, until he did.
“Then I became afraid of the camera,” he confessed. “I got camera fright because I made such bad films.”
Skarsgård’s forays into softcore cinema had left him so disenchanted that he’d lost all confidence in his abilities as an actor. He knew they’d never be received as high art, nor were they meant to be, but the quality was so desperately lacking that he wouldn’t appear in a single feature between 1977 and 1982.
“It’s like stage fright; it feels like your head is about to explode and you cannot remember what you’re supposed to say,” he explained, which left him feeling like he was “so tense and scared and you want to die.”
Obviously, he recovered, but those titillating early days were almost the end of him.
