Alexander Skarsgård doesn’t know why you’re so obsessed with what he wears. As we speak in November at the Chateau Marmont, he’s splayed his 6-foot-4 frame into a chair, and wears a billowing white shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest and ’70s-style aviators. But — especially when promoting the gay BDSM drama “Pillion,” out Feb. 6 — his fashion choices tend to make waves.
At the Governors Awards, Skarsgård rocked a vermilion manicure, and his “Pillion” press tour attire has featured a halter top, leather pants, thigh-high boots and a button-down shirt depicting sex toys. (Given the film’s subject matter, this may be what’s called “Method dressing.”) Suffice it to say that whenever he leaves the house, Skarsgård catalyzes plenty of conversation, and plenty of thirst too. So what goes into his sartorial choices?
Alexi Lubomirski for Variety
“Um,” he says, and pauses. “I never buy clothes. If you saw my closet, my wardrobe is very limited. I’m not a big consumer of fashion. I don’t spend money on expensive brands. I really enjoy the creativity of it, but it’s not like I’m out shopping for these outfits.” (Of course not! He works with the stylist Harry Lambert.) “I guess it’s something I’ve leaned into a bit more of late,” Skarsgård says, bringing the subject to a close.
At 49 — so ageless that he recalls his breakout role as a vampire on HBO’s “True Blood” — Skarsgård has been leaning in, all right. His sly sensibility and his careerlong interest in subverting the leading-man looks come to the fore in “Pillion” and in two Sundance movies: A24’s “The Moment,” to be released Jan. 30, and the sales title “Wicker.” In the first, he plays a creative director whose alluring unknowability convinces Charli xcx (playing a fictionalized version of herself) to toss aside everything that had made her successful; in the second, he’s a creature conjured from grasses and reeds to provide Olivia Colman’s little-loved fishmonger character companionship and solace.
The role of a wicker man came with some occupational hazards, and Skarsgård cites his famous father, Stellan, as a benchmark. “It wasn’t like when Dad did ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ and they had to glue on each barnacle,” Skarsgård says. (Stellan played the decaying seafarer Bootstrap Bill Turner in that franchise.) “He spent seven or eight hours in the chair in the morning. On this, they got it down to just over an hour.” But the days were punishing. The wicker “was glued to my face, and then they glued the eyelids and the lips — my eyes dried up, and I couldn’t eat or drink, and I couldn’t sweat.”
Skarsgård shot for two weeks, and was allowed a week off to let his skin recover from the glue. The process, though arduous, opened up a new style of acting. “You have to work in a very different way,” he says. To make himself known underneath the effects, “I had to exaggerate everything. Which feels weird when you’re trying to stay present in a scene with someone as incredible as Olivia, who’s so subtle in everything she does.” Skarsgård tends toward the tactical, the shift in feeling conveyed through a micro-expression. This time, he had to go big. “I couldn’t listen to my natural instinct. I had to be my own puppeteer.”
As Sundance and the impending release of “Pillion” will soon prove, Skarsgård is adept at transformation. It’s a slate of projects that may catapult him to a new level of a career that has stopped inches short of stardom — not that Skarsgård seems to have been seeking it. It’s strange to call a certified hunk who’s been on multiple HBO hits a “cult actor,” but Skarsgård’s admirers speak of him as something of a well-kept secret: He’s an actor who’s shown a taste for provocation in projects large and small. Now, he’s digging deeper into idiosyncrasy, and daring longtime fans to go along for the ride.
The three performances share almost nothing: In “Pillion,” he’s ruthlessly insensitive, concealing everything about himself from the man with whom he’s in a relationship (played by Harry Melling). In “The Moment,” he’s all volatility and excess, outdoing even the music industry’s top party girl when it comes to riotous energy. And in “Wicker,” he’s viewing humanity from the outside.
Alexi Lubomirski for Variety
That last trait can indicate what it feels like to speak to Skarsgård. He seems at times to be operating on a slightly different plane from the one an interviewer occupies, as when discussing recent speculation around his sexuality. Addressing his role in “Pillion” at the Zurich Film Festival in October, Skarsgård said, “I found that in this case, it’s not really relevant what my background is. I mean, I do have a kid, but what I’ve done in the past, who I’ve been with, men, women …” The same internet that obsesses over Skarsgård’s sartorial play lit up at the idea he was coming out as bisexual.
“Oh,” Skarsgård says after being asked to elaborate, taken aback. “That it resonated with my past? It was definitely not an intended statement,” he says. “I don’t know what I was talking about.
“Maybe it has to do with — there’s a lot of focus sometimes on me as an actor. Maybe it was trying to shift the focus more to the story and these characters. And the importance of telling the story like this.” After all, “Pillion” is a sexually frank exploration of human dynamics; Skarsgård doesn’t want himself, even as its star, to become the story.
Thankfully for him, “Pillion” provides plenty of grist for conversation. In a climate that suddenly seems primed for same-sex romance post-“Heated Rivalry,” “Pillion” might well explode, becoming for gay men what “Babygirl” was to straight women.
In “Pillion,” the two main characters meet in a bar and, within moments, strike up a relationship in which each gives the other what they seem to want: Skarsgård’s Ray denies an emotional connection, telling Melling’s Colin to sleep on the floor and to cook for him, all of which Colin, an awkward and shy barbershop-quartet singer, enjoys as a sex game, up to a point. The production kicked off just as rapidly: Melling tells me that he met Skarsgård for the first time mid-shoot, and they immediately started rehearsing a scene they’d be filming the next day, in which the two lovers wrestle in singlets. The subject matter made intimacy easy: “From the first second I met him, when we started rehearsing the scene, he was clutching my prosthetic erection,” Melling says.
Skarsgård came up with a backstory for Ray, an explanation for what drove him. And he kept it entirely to himself. “It wasn’t like I had a Word document,” he says. The story evolved; certain aspects of the character dynamic came into conflict with Skarsgård’s ideas, and he adjusted without telling anyone he was doing so.
Skarsgård keeping Ray’s motivations in reserve was productive for Melling. “The whole relationship between Colin and Ray is Colin second-guessing Ray,” he says. “If I knew what Alex was thinking all the time, I don’t think I would have had access to this befuddled confusion Colin lives in.”
For Harry Lighton, a first-time director, the dynamic in “Pillion” is applicable beyond the world of BDSM — the more Colin craves affection, the less Ray gives him. “If someone is a bit of a dick or a bit cold to you, you find yourself trying harder to get that person’s attention,” Lighton says. When I speak to the director, Team “Pillion” are in the midst of promotional obligations. “We’re off the back of three nights consecutively partying,” he says, “and we’re probably feeling a bit worse for wear.”
It’s hard to imagine another actor at Skarsgård’s level of fame taking on a film as risqué as “Pillion,” which Skarsgård has been promoting through a festival run that began last year at Cannes. It exists, now, in a world where fans swoon over Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams’ on-screen romance, but its explicitness may make “Heated Rivalry” look like “The Dating Game,” with degradation — literal boot-licking and all — at the center of the story.
Alexi Lubomirski for Variety
Skarsgård was Lighton’s first choice. “We might as well take one big swing,” he recalls thinking, having been inspired by watching Skarsgård’s arc on “Succession.” There, he played a capricious and unreadable tech zillionaire whose appetite for conquest, and whose ability to play the Roy family for fools, allowed him to “win” the series’ game of thrones as the show wrapped up.
“What he was doing as Lukas Matsson was so interesting — yes, playing with his obvious physical ridiculousness, but simultaneously domming the Roy children,” Lighton says. “That’s a bit of what I want from Ray: someone who has this caricaturish physical beauty, but psychologically is hard to read and feels like the cleverest person in the room.”
Is “Pillion,” with its couple unable to speak openly or to do much beyond play out a sexual dynamic, a love story? “I don’t want to answer that,” Skarsgård says, more assertive than he’s been to this point. “I have thoughts on it. But I think it’s a very relatable relationship story, with different beats of a relationship, except in a very specific subculture that’s foreign to most people.”
“Succession” was one of several turning points for Skarsgård, whose career began in earnest with a cameo in 2001’s “Zoolander” as one of the “orange mocha Frappuccino”-drinking male models in Zoolander’s orbit. Skarsgård had auditioned on a larky trip to America from his home in Sweden. (After living in the U.S. for decades, Skarsgård has returned to Sweden, where he lives with his family.)
In childhood, Skarsgård was embarrassed by his dad’s unconventional lifestyle as an itinerant actor; he’s said that all he wanted was a father who carried a briefcase. Instead, he found himself the eldest in a family of eight children, including his actor brothers Bill (“Nosferatu”), Gustaf (“Westworld”) and Valter (horror films “Funhouse” and “Lords of Chaos”).
Alex emerged as a child actor in Sweden, hardly expecting his career to go anywhere; he enlisted in the Swedish Navy at 19, and didn’t expect anything from “Zoolander” either. After moving to the U.S. in 2004, Skarsgård found roles in the wake of his brush with Zoolanderian notoriety sparse — with David Simon and Ed Burns’ 2008 Iraq War miniseries “Generation Kill,” on HBO, representing a step forward. Later that year, HBO gave Skarsgård the experience of fame for the first time, with “True Blood.”
One might expect that the son of a well-known actor might spend his own years waiting for a break with some measure of resentment. Despite his father’s fame, Skarsgård was patient. “In some ways I compared myself to my dad, but I wasn’t jealous. My first job was a soap opera. So I didn’t expect to go play the lead in a Lukas Moodysson film,” he says, referring to the acclaimed Swedish director of “Together” and other films. “It wasn’t like, Why am I not getting …?! Of course I’m not. I’m 22, and I’m a soap actor.”
“True Blood” was a soap of a different sort — blood-drenched, unabashedly sexual and a smash hit. Its plot revolved around the love story between telepath Sookie and vamp Bill (Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer), but Skarsgård’s Eric Northman, a Viking turned immortal, became the fan favorite thanks to his penchant for flamboyant violence and a gradually revealed sensitive side. After “True Blood” went off the air in 2014, Skarsgård was the lead in Warner Bros.’ 2016 IP play “The Legend of Tarzan,” which, at a worldwide $356.7 million take, did not justify a sequel. Just as well — it was not the right path for Skarsgård.
The next year, playing Nicole Kidman’s alluring but abusive husband — a man whose impulses toward violence seem to arise from nowhere — on “Big Little Lies,” Skarsgård increasingly turned toward complexity. “Thank you for making this boy feel like one of the girls,” Skarsgård said in his Emmy acceptance speech; the award illustrated a growing sense that Skarsgård could do more than what he’d been offered. The team behind “Succession” may have had a similar realization; Skarsgård says he wasn’t expecting to return for the final season, in which his character took on a prominent role: “I was only supposed to do a couple episodes of Season 3. It was obviously very exciting, but I didn’t go into it signing a multiyear deal.” He’s now back in series-regular life with the Apple TV series “Murderbot.” There, he plays a robot who develops intelligence, finding himself newly aware of the fallibility of the humans around him.
To act, though, is to leave his family behind in Sweden. (Skarsgård, firmly private about his personal life, shares a child with Swedish actress Tuva Novotny, which he confirmed for the first time at a “Succession” premiere in March 2023.) Before parenthood, “I lived on the road,” he says. “I love that aspect of the industry — you’re a traveling circus. But now, I need to balance that with family life and making sure I can be present for my kid. I can’t be as selfish and narcissistic as I was before.”
The day before our interview, I’d watched Skarsgård and his father sit down for an Actors on Actors conversation. “Pillion” had a short qualifying run in 2025, and is awards-eligible this year; Stellan’s movie is “Sentimental Value” (he’s now won a Golden Globe for the role), and the Skarsgårds were nominated in the same category at the Gotham Awards. Alex told his father how much he’d yearned for a conventional life growing up, but sitting there in teal bloomers with socks pulled toward his knees, he’d apparently outgrown that desire. The pair spoke to a CNN reporter after the taping, and deflected, together, a question about what father thought of son’s nude scenes in “Pillion.” “I’ve seen him naked for 49 years, ” Stellan began.
“Daily! I send him nudes every day,” Alex said.
It was something of a perfect Alexander Skarsgård moment — with wry wit (and in attention-grabbing clothing), he didn’t allow things to get too deep. But his father and conversational sparring partner clearly is a soft spot; the most vulnerable he gets is when I ask about Stellan’s celebrated performance, and about seeing him again and again on the campaign trail.
Alexi Lubomirski for Variety
“I’ve never had that before with my dad, nor any of my brothers,” Skarsgård says. “When we’re home, we spend time together, but it’s usually a household filled with chaos. So it’s been nice to go out for a pint somewhere and have a conversation that lasts more than a few minutes.”
I wondered how seeing Stellan play a father — one whose chaos has harmed his two grown children — felt. “It was a very emotional experience,” he says, “knowing how much the movie means to my father, and how nervous he was going into it.” Stellan suffered a stroke in 2022, and Alex describes his father’s feelings as “Am I never going to be able to act again? Am I now being put out to pasture?
“Knowing where he came from a few years ago — Will I ever work again? to Fuck, yeah, I like to work… It’s the most heartfelt, beautiful thing he’s ever done.”
Stellan Skarsgård, who’s moved between working with auteurs like Lars von Trier and Joachim Trier to franchises like “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Dune,” might provide a template for his oldest son. Alex has the audience in mind, even on his quirkier films. “In more intimate projects, it’s tricky,” Skarsgård says. “I want the movies I make to be seen by people. I’m not making them only for myself.” He sounds uncertain, but hopeful too. “You imagine,” he concludes, “that people will connect to it in some way.”
Of Skarsgård’s three new projects, “The Moment” may split the difference between mainstream fare and independent spirit most cleanly. It’s an audacious cinematic statement that is based on a Grammy-winning pop album — a record Skarsgård loves. “Secretly, quietly, on my little island in Sweden, I had a ‘brat summer,’” he says.
“People always say, Oh, I’m genuinely a fan,” he continues, casting his near-monotone up an octave sarcastically. But he’d been listening to “Brat” even before Aidan Zamiri and Bertie Brandes wrote the screenplay for “The Moment.” “I told Charli after we shot the movie that when they sum up the year on Spotify, she was my No. 2 most-played artist of the year.”
The admiration was mutual: Working with renowned casting director Jennifer Venditti (“Uncut Gems,” “Marty Supreme,” “Euphoria”) and with director Zamiri, Charli had asked for Skarsgård to play her outlandish creative director, Johannes. “I had seen him in ‘The Northman,’ in ‘Infinity Pool’ and obviously in Lady Gaga’s ‘Paparazzi’ video,” Charli writes via email, “and it just seemed clear to me that he was a pretty fearless person who also had an understanding of pop culture and a great sense of humor — and I was totally right!”
The idea of working with Charli was enough to bring Skarsgård on board. “What I love about Charli as an artist is that she is not afraid to show her own flaws and insecurities. That’s what makes her very brave,” Skarsgård says. The film doesn’t go easy on the fictional Charli, who is willing to sell out her entire career to keep chasing success.
The pair largely improvised their scenes together, including one where Johannes walks through a stage show he’s planned for Charli. (The tour, as cheesily earnest as the real Charli is louche and irreverent, calls to mind footage of Katy Perry’s last world tour.) “The entire thing is improvised,” she says. “We shot it over and over again just because we had the time and we had so many ideas.”
“A version of this movie,” Skarsgård says, “could be her trying desperately to stay true to who she is as an artist. But so much of the movie’s about her being insecure and leaning into I’m kind of addicted to this in a way.”
Johannes exploits that, just as Skarsgård’s characters in the past have exploited a wife’s need to keep her family together on “Big Little Lies” or squabbling siblings’ resentments on “Succession” — or a young man’s eagerness to get pushed around in “Pillion.”
Charli’s real-life success with “Brat” lay in her willingness to stop trying to deliver what the industry wanted and make work that pulsed with its own oddity and magic. “Charli was playing with the performance of doing the expected record” prior to “Brat,” says Zamiri. “‘Brat’ was the complete antithesis: Let me be extremely specific. Let me make something which is entirely for me.”
Skarsgård’s doing something similar — perhaps like Charli with “Brat,” he’s now making choices entirely for him. Over the past year, he has played a dom top, a music industry villain, a robot and a wicker man. We’re a long way from Tarzan.
But we’ve been here for a while. Before our meeting, I looked up when Skarsgård had been at Sundance before; one such time was to promote 2023’s “Infinity Pool,” the boundary-pushing horror movie that helped convince Charli that Skarsgård was the right man to torment her on-screen. Skarsgård walked the red carpet in a dog collar: It was a nod to the film’s content, and a way for him to put his sensibility out front while promoting the movie.
“Our screening started at midnight, so we did it in the reverse order,” Skarsgård recalls. “We went out, had dinner, went to a couple of parties — and had to do a Q&A at 2:30 in the morning. I was slightly inebriated.”
I put the Charli comparison — call it “Skarsgård is ‘Brat’” — forward to him. “I wouldn’t flatter myself that much,” he says. “What she’s doing is extraordinary.” He mentions his admiration for “Chains of Love,” her single that came out three days earlier: “It’s not about, OK, what am I expected to do now to make a commercial hit?” He lets a silence fall, seeming to turn my comparison over in his head, and then bursts into nervous laughter. “But yes, there are definitely other paths I could have taken after ‘True Blood.’ And I followed my curiosity, to see where that takes me.”
Styling: Erica Cloud/The Wall Group; Grooming: Kim Verbeck/The Wall Group; Look 1 (Dot jacket look): Full look: Tom Ford; Look 2 (Sofa and wine glass look): Full look: Thom Browne; Look 3 (Jean look): Jacket and jeans: Gabriela Hearst; Boots: Saint Laurent: Look 4 (Sweater look): Sweater: Gabriela Hearst
