Alexander Skarsgrd is a Swedish television and movie actor who is best remembered for his performance in HBOs television series True Blood, for which he won the Scream Award for the Best Villain in 2009, and in satirical comedy Zoolander. He has been named Swedens Sexiest Man five times.
EARLY LIFE
Born on the 25th of August, 1976 Skarsgrd was born to actor Stellan Skarsgrd and his physician wife My in Stockholm, Sweden. He has five younger siblings: Gustaf, Sam, Bill, Eija, and Valter, and two half-brothers Ossian and Kolbjrn. Three of his five siblings, Gustaf Skarsgrd, Bill Skarsgrd, and Valter Skarsgrd, are also actors.
Skarsgrd applied to do his national service at the age of 19, and served the Swedish military for 18 months. He served the anti-sabotage and anti-terrorism unit in the Stockholm archipelago. He completed his service in 1996 and went on to attend Leeds Beckett University in England. He then moved to New York where he enrolled in a theater course at the Marymount Manhattan College. After completing his course, he realized that he wanted to be an actor.
PERSONAL LIFE
The actor has been dating British model, stylish, and fashion journalist Alexa Chung since 2015.
ACTING CAREER
TELEVISION
Despite featuring in a handful of movies, Skarsgrd gained recognition only after being cast as Sergeant Brad Iceman Colbert in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill. Based on Evan Wrights book with the same name, the series follows the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps during the early part of the Iraq War. The director and producer of the show disagreed on casting Skarsgrd for the part since the producer believed that he would not be able to pull off the American accent. However, while shooting for the show, the actor worked closely worked with a dialect course to master the American accent.
Just before his shoot for Generation Kill began, Skarsgrd found out about HBOs new series True Blood based on Charlaine Harriss Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels. He was initially reluctant on playing a vampire but upon learning that Alan Ball, the creator of HBOs Six Feet Under, was handling the project, he sent his audition tape across. He then bagged the role of Eric Northman, a 1000-year-old Viking vampire sheriff and a local bar owner. His performance in the series has won him several awards and nominations.
MOVIES
When Skarsgrd was only seven years old, his fathers friend, Allan Edwall, offered Skarsgrd his first role in Swedish movie ke och hans vrld (ke and His World) in 1984. Five years after his first role, the young actor bagged the lead role in Swedish television production Hunden som log (The Dog That Smiled), which led to him becoming extremely famous in Sweden. Unable to keep up with the ever-increasing fame, Skarsgrd quit acting at the age of thirteen and only decided to act again after returning from New York.
Skarsgrd first started with small acting jobs until he bagged the role of Meekus in the 2001 satirical comedy Zoolander. His work in the 2002 release The Dog Trick (Hundtricket - The Movie) garnered him with appreciation and a Guldbagge Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The actor was then seen The Last Drop, Om Sara, Kill Your Darlings, Trust Me, and 13. In 2010, Skarsgrd was cast in British mockumentary Beyond the Pole where he played the role of a gay Norwegian who treks his way to the North Pole.
In 2011, Skarsgrd then appeared in the remake of the 1971 movie Straw Dogs, where he played he played the role of an ex-footballer. The same year, the actor was seen in apocalyptic movie Melancholia co-starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Kiefer Sutherland. The following year, he was seen in military science fiction action war film Battleship cast alongside Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna. He was then seen in the adaptation of Henry James novel What Maisie Knew with the same name, which opened to positive reviews. He was also a part of an ensemble cast in American drama film Disconnect, which focuses on the negative impact of the modern-day forms of communication on people.
In 2013, Skarsgrd was seen in Zal Batmanglijs thriller The East co-starring Brit Marling and Ellen Page. He was then seen in The Diary of a Teenage Girl co-starring Kristen Wiig and Bel Powley, and Zoolander 2 co-starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Skarsgrds projects for 2016 include British crime comedy War on Everyone co-starring Michael Pea and Theo James, and action adventure film The Legend of Tarzan where he plays the titular role opposite Margot Robbie.