Alexander Skarsgaard Talks About Eric, Generation Kill

Actor has killer looks, killer roles
Hal Boedeker | Sentinel Television Critic July 20, 2008

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Alexander Skarsgard walked away from celebrity once. He won’t be doing that again.

“I was working as a child actor in Sweden until I was 13, then I quit,” says the son of actor Stellan Skarsgard. “I didn’t like the fame. I didn’t do anything for seven years. I turned down everything. Then, when I was 20, I missed it. I wanted to try it again.”

Skarsgard says reading about himself as a teen made him very confused. “I think I can deal with it better than when I was 13,” says the actor, who is 31.

He’ll inspire a lot of talk in coming weeks. He has a star-making role in HBO’s Generation Kill, a fact-based, seven-part miniseries at 9 p.m. Sundays. Then Skarsgard portrays Eric, a thousand-year-old vampire, in HBO’s True Blood, a drama series debuting Sept. 7.

Oh, and there’s his looks: The blond, 6-foot-4 performer frequently has been voted the sexiest man in Sweden.

“He’s gorgeous. The camera loves him,” said True Blood executive producer Alan Ball. “He’s a sweetheart. He brings the role to life. A lot of guys would come in and decide to play the role as a tough guy. He plays it very understated, which really works. It makes him that more menacing.”

Skarsgard brings a quiet authority to his role as Sgt. Brad Colbert in Generation Kill, which is set in the early days of the Iraq war.

“We were very cautious about casting Colbert. He is the moral and psychic center to the piece in a lot of ways,” executive producer David Simon said. “Alex had a presence.”

The production’s attention to detail extends to Skarsgard’s wearing a back tattoo.

“It’s Colbert’s. I don’t have that. It’s fake,” Skarsgard said.

Generation Kill is Skarsgard’s biggest project yet in this country — he lives in Los Angeles and Stockholm. His other credits include Zoolander, The Last Drop and Kill Your Darlings. He joins True Blood as Eric in the fourth episode. TV critics are raving over that series at their summer tour here.

“Eric is a really important role in the show,” said Ball, who adapted the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. “It’s the one that Charlaine’s fans seem to be most interested in who they were going to cast, even though they were pitching professional wrestlers and models. I was very pleased to find Alex and that he was willing to do the show.”

Eric is the boss of the Louisiana area where the story is set. Skarsgard tosses in a Swedish line every so often although the Nordic vampire has lived in this country almost a century.

“It’s one of the main characters in the books,” Skarsgard said. “He’s probably going to be featured a while.”

Like the actor himself.

(from the Orlando Sentinel)