Truly, Madly, Deadly_ The Unofficial True Blood Companion - Becca Wilcott [29]
Ellis appeared in 2009’s dramatic feature The Soloist with actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, further evidence that this star is on the rise. But he’s never far from home, grounded as always, and thinking about his Thornridge teachers, Tim Sweeney and Bill Kirksey. “If this moment never happens again,” Ellis muses, “I hope that it will be enough to show Mr. Kirksey and Mr. Sweeney that their investment in me wasn’t in vain.”
(Matt Sayles/AP Photo)
Alexander Skarsgård (Eric Northman)
“The celebrity culture is very different in America. There are no paparazzi in Sweden, so I’m not harassed. It’s a socialist country, so you shouldn’t think you’re special. It’s not like L.A., where people drive around in their pimped-out Bentleys. In Sweden you’re supposed to drive your Volvo and shop at Ikea.”
— Alexander Skarsgård
“[Alexander’s] very humble, extremely talented, and so freaking Mount Olympus good-looking that sometimes I just want to be him.”
— Nelsan Ellis
Alexander (Johan Hjalmar) Skarsgård, born August 25, 1976, in Stockholm, Sweden, is the eldest of seven siblings. He has five younger brothers, Gustaf, Sam, Bill, and Valter — all actors — and one younger sister, Eija. His family has been called acting royalty, the Skarsgård Dynasty. His parents, My Skarsgård, a doctor, and Stellan Skarsgård, a well-known actor, divorced in 2007. Stellan Skarsgård has since remarried, and fathered another son, Ossian.
Skarsgård was seven years old when his father’s friend, Allan Edwall, cast a young Alex in a film adaptation of the Swedish children’s book Ake och hans värld (Ake and His World), in which Stellan Skarsgård also appeared. Watching the film, it’s clear the junior Skarsgård already possessed the quiet contemplation, and intense intellect, required to portray the thousand-year-old vampire sheriff, Eric Northman.
On growing up in an acting dynasty helmed by the internationally renowned Stellan Skarsgård — whose North American film credits alone include Breaking the Waves, Good Will Hunting, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mamma Mia!, and Angels & Demons — Skarsgård remembers, “[My father] wasn’t that big a star when I grew up . . . he was mostly a stage actor . . . I’ve got younger siblings, and it was different for them. They did more of the traveling around the world, being on sets and all of that exotic stuff. For me, it was running around backstage at the theater . . .”
Pursuing an acting career at such a young age was largely his decision. “My parents never dragged me to auditions . . . Things just kind of happened, and I thought it was fun.” But, by the time Skarsgård was 13, he’d decided it was time for a break. He’d become an icon for his 1989 role in Hunden som log (The Dog That Smiled), and the focus on his celebrity confused Skarsgård who was becoming increasingly self-conscious, citing that pre-teen life is already tough enough. He began to doubt if he was liked (in particular, by girls) because he was appealing, or because he was on television. He made the unseasonably mature decision to step back from the limelight.
“If I didn’t quit at that time,” Skarsgård says, “I would have crashed and burned, and I doubt I would be acting today.”
For seven years, Skarsgård declined every role he was offered, figuring life out as he went. He distanced himself from his parents, living with friends in a small apartment, and even winding up in jail one night after a fight when he was 17. He turned his attentions to political science, and entered the Berga Naval Academies as a sergeant (patrol leader) to serve with the Swedish Navy. “I grew up in downtown Stockholm . . . I figured if I was going to do this, I wanted to do it for real and full-on, and actually physically and mentally challenge myself . . . [M]ost of the guys I was with in my platoon were kind of like Rambos,