Why Alexander Skarsgård almost quit acting after his big break: “I was done with it”
It’s quite hard to keep track of how many Skarsgårds there are. There’s Stellan, obviously, but then a quick bit of research shows that he not only has eight children from two different wives, but an astonishing six of them are also actors, meaning life for them back in Sweden must be more confusing than trying to get out of Ikea empty-handed. For the purposes of today’s lesson, we’ll focus on Alexander Skarsgård.
He’s the eldest of Stellan’s brood and probably the best known, although his brother Bill is fast trying to change that thanks to his turn as Pennywise the clown and the John Wick movies. Alexander, though, has been on screen since the early 2000s, appearing in Ben Stiller’s Zoolander and moving to Los Angeles, where he finally got a proper break when he appeared in the fantastic HBO war drama Generation Kill.
It was around the same time that Skarsgård landed a plum role on True Blood, the hugely successful sexy vampire series in which he starred as Eric Northman, in a foreshadowing of his later, unrelated role as The Northman in the epic Robert Eggers movie from 2022. He went on to gain more success and awards on TV thanks to his work on the show that damn-near everyone and their grandma couldn’t stop talking about: Succession.
Perhaps due to his famous father, he was always a possibility to go into acting, but long before Skarsgård made the transition to the US, he had already found quite some attention in his native Sweden thanks to a TV show called The Dog That Smiled. Surprisingly, though, rather than embrace the opportunity the show gave him, Skarsgård instead decided to quit acting altogether.
He said: “It wasn’t a break. I was done with it. I enjoyed the acting part of it, but I wasn’t comfortable with the attention. I wanted to be a regular kid; I wasn’t comfortable with people reading about me and knowing so much about me.”
His father apparently supported his decision completely, as well as his son’s choice to instead join the Swedish navy, where he served for several years.
Skarsgård added, “The best advice he ever gave me was when he told me it was OK to quit. He said it has to come from within, and if you’re not 100% sure, don’t do it. He was working onstage at the time, not doing international films. And he said, ‘90% of my friends who are actors, brilliant actors, can’t support themselves.’”
Most recently, Skarsgård has been promoting his gay biker comedy film Pillion, the debut movie from director Harry Lighton that also stars the Harry Potter actor Harry Melling. Pillion has already picked up awards, both for the film itself and Skarsgård’s performance, and received a seven-minute standing ovation at Cannes. Due to some of the film’s subject matter, several cuts had to be made in order to get it past censors and screened in the US.
Skarsgård himself has said: “There’s definitely a raunchier version of this movie… what you’ve seen is the family-friendly version… there’s also the Alexander Skarsgård cut.”
