Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård doesn't believe in bad guys. Sure, he played the evil Baron Harkonnen in Dune, but generally, he says, human beings are nuanced creatures: "They're flawed, they're sad, and they're comic. ... They are everything."
Skarsgård began acting as a teenager and has appeared in more than 100 movies. Now 74, he's been nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his performance in Sentimental Value, from the Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier.
In the film, Skarsgård plays an accomplished filmmaker struggling to connect with his two grown daughters, who feel that he was absent when they were growing up. As the father of eight in real life, Skarsgård says he understands the tension his character faces.
"The conflict between working as an artist and combining that with a personal life is difficult, and those problems I have," he says. "But that goes for every artist."
Four years ago, Skarsgård suffered a mild stroke, which affected his balance and made it difficult to learn lines. He filmed Sentimental Value while wearing an earpiece, which allowed a prompter to feed him his lines right before they needed to be spoken, and over his fellow actor's lines.
"It's quite complicated in terms of simultaneous work. … But it's feasible, and we did it," he says. "So I don't think there's any trace of the stroke in my work."
Interview highlights
On how he relates to Gustav Borg, the character he plays in Sentimental Value
He's from a different generation, he's a different kind of father than I am. ... 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, ... "Do you recognize yourself?" And I went, "No." And he said, "Look again." Even if I was at home, basically eight months of 12 — I only worked four months a year since 1989 — if I were 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 have eight children. ... Some children need me a lot, and some don't need me at all. So you can't get it right as a parent.
On how expressive he and the Sentimental Value cast are in quiet moments
What you need to do, and what I like to do, is to show whatever happens between the lines, under the lines, before the lines, after the lines. And that counterbalances and sometimes says that the line you're just saying is a lie, or it says that line you were just saying you don't understand. So it becomes a much richer tapestry of feelings and Joachim Trier is fantastic in that sense. That is what he loves.
On improvising with Robin Williams on set of the 1997 film Good Will Hunting
It was fantastic. He was a very nice man and a very gentle man but he had, like, three brains going on at the same time, wildly, and he was very funny and he was improvising. He improvised every scene; we had to do some extra takes because he had to get his versions out of his system. It was very funny. But the improvisation was also good for us all. You had to follow him wherever he went and also he would follow you wherever you went. Everything became very different from the previous take because of Robin leading it to somewhere that you didn't expect to end up. But what the film's director, Gus Van Sant, got out of it was he got extremely vivid takes, and different temperatures in the takes, and he got aggression in some takes, and sort of niceness in some takes, and he could cut those takes into any kind he wanted when he was editing. He could take the film where he wanted.
On singing and dancing in the Mamma Mia movies
I can't sing, I cannot dance. ... I was terrified. All three of us were terrified. [This included the other male stars, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth.] We got to that studio and we met [ABBA members] Björn [Ulvaeus] and Benny [Andersson who] had made all these songs and they're very good musicians. And they were so nice to us, but we were so frightened. We didn't know how to get it started, but they encouraged us and we threw ourselves into it. We felt that they can always fix it afterwards.
I think all actors want it to be an intellectual work. ... But it's not. ... It has nothing to do with sort of laying an intellectual puzzle.Stellan Skarsgård
On why he believes acting is not intellectual
I think all actors want it to be an intellectual work. They make up all kinds of things to feel that they're doing a job that is worthy of all the money they get. But it's not. I mean, you can have an amateur play better than a professional actor in some scenes and in some cases. You have to be as good as an amateur. You have to produce real life, real irrationality, real emotions that come up spontaneously, suddenly, unexpectedly. And it has nothing to do with sort of laying an intellectual puzzle.
On many of his children pursuing acting (including Bill and Alexander Skarsgård)
I didn't encourage it and I didn't discourage it. I don't think that parents should impose their dreams on their kids at all. They shouldn't interfere with their choices. If they want advice, they'll come to you. It's a terrible thing to interfere with it. In a way I'm happy because we have something in common. … We don't talk shop in the sense that I give them advice or they ask for advice because that's not useful. But at our dinners, we laugh at people, we gossip about people in the business, and we tell about that director and that actor, and if they misbehave. So we're like normal people.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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