To me, it's all about inspiration. What gets me creatively excited is a challenge.
Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.
I'm constantly embarrassed at the level of attention actors get and the level of money that we get. It's completely disproportionate.
I feel like I'm the best actor on the planet and I also feel like I'm a fraud. I think hubris comes from insecurity. Confidence comes in a more rooted sense; part of being confident is being able to say, "I can be really shitty," and to accept that. But also not to crumble under it.
A character on screen that's the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy,' they're never interesting. There's got to be an internal struggle, the duality is important to find.
I started acting when I was 9. I did smaller parts here and there as a kid, and then as I grew older I started resisting it, because I didn't like the idea of being, at the time, number four of the Skarsgård actors. So in high school I majored in science and was like, "Maybe I'll do something rebellious and become a doctor."
I needed to be myself and find my own identity.
I'm always looking for something that's real and that's got meat on it. I think it's artistic suicide if you're too vain, or if you're afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.
It's not about being proud of Sweden; it's just a sense of belonging. Even if you've lived in a place for a long time, those first formative years are going to be a part of you forever, and it's something you can't replace.
I've always been a night person. There's a sense of virtue attached to getting up in the morning and doing things and starting the day, and I always felt bad for not being that person. But as I've gotten a bit older, now I'm completely okay with it. That's just who I am.
In terms of jobs, I'm an actor. There's gotta' be depth there. I'd never say yes to something just to play the hot guy. That's not what I'm interested in.
I don't want to ever think that I don't know what to do. I want to deal with my own things, to perform my own roles, to be like, "I did this."
It's funny: it takes a while to really get your character. It's impossible to do it on the first day. That's the same way in films; if you start shooting a film, maybe a couple weeks in, you're like, "Ah! Now I think I really get him."
When I read a script and have my first interaction with this character, do I feel like there's something I'm gonna' learn here? If I feel like it's something I've done before, then what's the incentive for me to do it?
My height can be a problem. A lot of directors and photographers are sometimes not happy because I'm pretty tall and especially if I work with short actors the difference can be pretty massive.
I don't think I would ever be a doctor, but the reason I majored in science was because you could become a civil engineer, you could become a biologist, you could become a computer scientist - that was the point of it. I had no idea what I wanted to do. In my last two years of high school here happened to be these few scripts that I really responded to. Eventually, I landed the job, and that was something that I felt transcended whatever other people would think of me.
I come from a family of pacifists, so it's not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month.
I've lived in California for six years and I've never surfed.
In movies we tend make things black and white: you're either this, or you're that.
I worked with Lady Gaga for a day on a video shoot. It was crazy; we had a lot of fun. I had a great time.
I see myself as most people see themselves, you have good days and bad days. I don't think I'm better looking now than I did three years ago.
There's something I love about how stark the contrast is between January and June in Sweden.
Acting was always there, it's true. But for a long time, in my teenage years, I wasn't sure about it - not because I didn't like it, but I didn't want people to think I hadn't earned it.
TV is a very sensitive thing. If you're not happy with what you're doing, I don't think you should do it because you will do it for awhile.
I miss being in my home country; here, I'm always a foreigner. America is, of course, built of people who are not from here. But going home, even just landing at Arlanda, the Stockholm airport, I think, "This is where I'm from. These people are my people."
