March 29, 2013
Stellan Skarsgård is
restless during filming at the Perminalen Hotel in Oslo. His co-star in the
scene, a Danish actor in a small role as an assassin, waits silently leaning
against the wall, dressed in black with galoshes over shoes. All the while
Stellan paces back and forth between takes, but it is not because he is unhappy
in any way. He's just a restless soul and always has been.
It was his
mother who originally had the idea that he should try his hand as an actor. He
was the eldest of five children, and the middle-class family had to move about
in Sweden because his father always needed better-paying jobs. So the need to
adapt to new surroundings has followed Stellan since he was a little boy, and he
believes this has influenced him with the importance of family, a safe ticket in
an otherwise ephemeral existence.
The first memory Stellan has is a
railroad crossing: two booms that slowly descend. It's just a picture. Also the
smell of a rain-soaked pine forest in summer with his grandmother and
grandfather on Öland. Perhaps his father simply was restless, too.

It's a science fiction horror movie where Stellan plays a
professor named Whitlock tries to find a cure for Alzheimer's.
Stellan: I love life and I want it to be good. There I had the
a pool and beach in Mexico and walking distance to the film set, two or three
days a week. I flew in 25 friends who stayed with me... The only movie that can
compete is Mamma Mia!.
Q: How much do you earn?
Stellan:
On a large production I can get up to one million dollars. But I never have any
money left. My personal finances are a disaster. It's a weakness I have
inherited from my father. He was an economist. But really, he was a dreamer. My
worldly outlook on life, I have inherited from my mother... She had this desire
to say what one cannot say, and I have this desire too. Doing what you cannot
do. Perhaps the reason for I have become an actor... My dad was unconventional
for his time. He showed his children respect, enjoying life with books, math,
good food and drink. I inherited no money, but the language...
Q: How
have you been as a father?
Stellan: I've never been brilliant. I have
screamed at them, but I have treated them with the honesty and respect I learned
at home. When I first became a father, I was 25, and then I was pretty keen to
find my own way in life, but last time I was 61. I'm better now...
When the subject of Lars Von Trier comes up, he then talks
about male directors.
Stellan: Directors are often socially disturbed individuals. As
children, they had no friends, so instead they set up the children's room and
built a world where they can have full control of their environment... And it is
this sense of control they attempt to recreate as adults when directing
film.

Q: How was it working with Ingmar Bergman?
Stellan: He
was a great director, but a terrible human being. I can live with directors who
will retake control of the children's room, but he wanted to control everything.
When he was directing me in "One Dream Play", he demanded that I quit
smoking.
Stellan drums with his fingers restlessly on the table. He is
probably not aware of it. He seems overly attentive to it. He talks about LA and
how he couldn't live his whole life there. He calls it the City of Fear, an
entertaining but weird place where everyone is at all times afraid to be in the
wrong place at the wrong party... Along with his two youngest children and his
wife, he lives in an apartment on Södermalm in Stockholm.
Q: How about
an Oscar statuette?
Stellan: It would be cool.
Q: Then why not find a suitable role?
Stellan: To play
the handicapped tends to work. Or a historical figure. (He throws out his arms
as if he has the solution). A handicapped historical figure!