Alexander Skarsgård uses his size to make a man’s uncertainty more uncomfortable to watch. We rate his restraint, especially in crowded company, though straightforward heroic roles can leave him looking stiff.
Fi1m perspective
In Generation Kill (2008), Alexander Skarsgård gives us someone to watch while the Marines around him keep talking. His Brad Colbert stays restrained amid David Simon and Ed Burns’s crowded company, and that makes the military language easier to follow. James Ransone’s Josh Ray Person gets the abrasive, profane talk; Skarsgård need not compete with him. We rate him most when a part makes that quietness useful. He can hold our attention without asking everyone else to stop.
The television breakthrough came with that series and True Blood (2008–2014), which cast him as the vampire Eric Northman. His subsequent roles have often put an apparently confident man under pressure until his uncertainty shows. The Legend of Tarzan (2016) exposed the risk: restraint can look stiff when the part chiefly requires a hero. Robert Eggers’s The Northman (2022), which Skarsgård also produced, gave him the physically demanding role of Amleth.
Infinity Pool (2023) puts his size to a less reassuring use. As stalled novelist James Foster, he grows smaller and blanker opposite Mia Goth’s gleefully cruel Gabi. We were horrified by the scene in which he watches a copy of himself, because Skarsgård makes one face frightened and the other curious. Brandon Cronenberg lets us watch long enough to study the difference. The film repeats itself in its second hour, but Skarsgård’s shrinking posture makes the humiliation uncomfortable to watch.
There is a less productive kind of disappearance in Lee (2024). His Roland Penrose gets a picnic, a few reunions and little else; the character exists mainly to be away. There is too little in the script for him to play, and it would be unfair to pretend a more demonstrative performance could repair it. Still, it shows how little his presence alone can do when the character has scarcely been written.
For a first encounter, we would choose Generation Kill, with a warning that its military vocabulary takes some patience. Its interest in boredom and ordinary detail is worth adjusting to. Try Infinity Pool only with a tolerance for repetition and cruelty.
Biography
Alexander Skarsgård is a Swedish actor. Born in Stockholm in 1976, he began acting as a child but stopped at the age of 13. After completing military service, he returned to acting and appeared in his first American film role in Zoolander (2001).
He played Brad Colbert in the miniseries Generation Kill (2008) and gained prominence as Eric Northman in the series True Blood (2008–2014). Later film roles include Melancholia (2011), Battleship (2012) and The Legend of Tarzan (2016). In Big Little Lies (2017–2019) he portrayed an abusive husband, earning a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
More recent work includes Long Shot (2019), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), The Northman (2022), Infinity Pool (2023) as James Foster and Lee (2024) as Roland Penrose.
