Stellan Skarsgård doesn’t believe in bad guys
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. Our guest today, Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, has had a long and interesting career, which only seems to get more interesting with age. Now in his 70s, he's just earned a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the widely acclaimed film Sentimental Value from the Danish-Norwegian director Joakim Trier. This surge in Skarsgård's fortunes comes four years after he suffered a stroke, which left him struggling to memorize his lines. He found a workaround, which we'll talk about, and that enabled him to continue to play roles he'd begun in the science fiction movie series Dune and the Star Wars spinoff TV series Andor, as well as the film Sentimental Value.
Skarsgård began acting as a teenager and has appeared in more than 100 movies, from independent European films like Breaking the Waves and Melancholia, to commercial Hollywood fare such as The Hunt for Red October, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Mamma Mia. He's also found time to raise eight children from two marriages. Five of those kids are also professional actors. The best known in the United States are his sons Alexander and Bill. Skarsgård will find out if he's an Oscar winner at the awards ceremony March 15th. He spoke to me last week from a studio in London. Stellan Skarsgard, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you very much. In this film, Sentimental Value, you play Gustav Borg. He's a famous director, and it's about his family relationship.
What insights does Stellan Skarsgård share about playing nuanced characters?
He's the target of a lot of anger from one of his daughters because she says he wasn't around. Being in the movie business can mean you're away a lot, and this daughter is also a successful actress herself. There's an obvious parallel here to your own life. I mean, you're in the movie business, and a lot of your children are actors. I know you've been asked this a lot, but to what extent when you read this script, did you identify with this character?
Not at all. He's from a different generation. He's a different kind of father than I am. Of course, the conflict between working as an artist and combining that with a personal life is difficult. And those problems I have. But that goes for every artist. But I didn't think I had anything to do with the role at all. So I did the entire film as if it was a stranger I was doing. But then my second son, Gustav, said to me, after having seen the film that he liked very much, that he said to me, do you recognize yourself? And I went, no. And he said, look again. And even if I was at home basically eight months of 12, I only worked four months a year since 1989. If I was at home eight months a year, I wasn't enough home for him.
So I started to thinking about it. What became clear to me is, I mean, I have eight children. So I have eight different needs. Some children need me a lot and some don't need me at all. So you can't get it right as a parent.
How did a stroke affect Stellan Skarsgård's acting career?
I read that the director, Joachim Trier, you talked about this, I guess, a year before you started shooting. And he kind of crafted the script for you. Is this true?
Yeah, he wrote it for me. Not as a service to me, but he was thinking of me when he was writing it. He and the writer Eskel Fugt. He says that the role was such a bad guy that he needed someone nice to do it. So it was a flattering way of putting it.
Yeah. Is he a bad guy, Gustav, your character?
I don't believe in bad guys.
No, no.
I mean, the monster that I did in Dune was a bad guy. You might say that. But in like human beings, we have problems because they are nuanced, real humans. And they're flawed. They're sad and they're comic and they're everything.
Right. And the gulf between Gustav and his daughter is bridged as the movie eventually reaches its climax. It's quite well done. You know, I don't have a clip to play from the film. For an American audience, a lot of the film is not in English.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:48
2
What insights does Stellan Skarsgård share about playing nuanced characters?
1:48–3:30
3
How did a stroke affect Stellan Skarsgård's acting career?
3:30–6:43
4
What parenting lessons does Stellan Skarsgård offer regarding his children in the film industry?
6:43–12:36
5
What unique improvisation experiences did Stellan Skarsgård have with Robin Williams?
12:36–21:28
6
How does Stellan Skarsgård view the concept of 'bad guys' in acting?
21:28–30:42
7
What techniques does Stellan Skarsgård use to memorize lines after his stroke?
30:42–46:28
Speakers
8 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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