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Acting is a very unusual profession: interview with Stellan Skarsgård

Alonso Díaz de la Vega

Stellan Skarsgård greets each of us waiting for his interview one by one. Outside, the audience is overcome with religious fervor, and it is the ecstatic crowd that wants to shake his hand. However, here, in a room at the Palacio Clavijero in Morelia, Michoacán, it is Skarsgård who greets the festival team. He comes across as a relaxed, affable, and funny man. When a production assistant closes the clapperboard in front of him for the video version of this interview, Skarsgård overreacts in order to make us laugh. It seems as if he is the one welcoming us, and not the other way around, but he is a true star, one of those who know they are an image, but who reverse the process through simplicity and manage to become even greater.

Skarsgård has been gradually rising in fame since the 1970s, when he began to make a name for himself in Swedish cinema. in the 1980s he collaborated with one of his country's most important filmmakers—and from whom he says he learned the most—Bo Widerberg, and towards the end of the decade he appeared alongside Juliette Binoche in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). The 1990s were crucial: during those years, he began working with Danish director Lars von Trier, which led both of them to establish themselves as internationally renowned figures after Breaking the Waves (1996), although they had already collaborated together on television.

The opportunity to interview Skarsgård arises during the 23^rd Morelia International Film Festival (FICM). The actor has come to present his latest film, Affeksjonsverdi (Sentimental Value, 2025), directed by Danish-Norwegian Joachim Trier. Skarsgård plays a Norwegian filmmaker with a Swedish father (the Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible, so this detail serves to explain the actor's accent), determined to shoot what could well be his last film within the framework of the modern industry, which he now finds alien. Gustav (Skarsgård) therefore decides to recruit people he trusts—although his director of photography is already very run-down—and plans to give the lead role to his daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve). The problem is that Gustav has been an absent father for most of her life and Nora refuses to help him. The production also brings him closer to Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), his other daughter, whom he had already directed, and an American star, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). These three women will have an effect on Gustav that will accentuate the tensions between his family and his work.

Below you can read the full interview with Stellan Skarsgård, edited for clarity.

FICM: I was thinking about the interview scene in Sentimental Value. This one won't turn out the same way, I promise. But I was wondering: as an actor, do you enjoy interviews? Do they reveal much about the art of acting?

Stellan Skarsgård: That's an interesting question. Because it's such a rare profession and it's very difficult to put into words; so I could talk about acting, but I couldn't explain it properly. I haven't even explained it to my children! They have to discover it for themselves. Doing media tours is interesting when you have a little more time; when journalists have more time and are from serious newspapers and are ambitious. In those cases, they prepare themselves and you can have a normal, interesting discussion. And you learn things about the films you made that you hadn't thought about. Because much of what you produce, of course, is unplanned.

FICM: I think it's interesting that you play a director who cares deeply about images but also about characters. I was wondering what kind of director you prefer: someone who works more closely with the actors or someone who focuses on imagery?

SS: There is no contradiction between those two [roles] in Joachim Trier, for example. He makes beautiful films; he focuses on what his films are, what drives them, or on the characters and the relationships between them. He doesn't really have a normal narrative. He's more impressionistic, but he's always next to the camera. He doesn't look at the monitor. He sits next to the camera and watches and watches and watches. So he sees everything that happens on your face and uses it. And that's how he gets such nuanced performances.

FICM: Who do you have in mind when you are acting? Is it the director you are working with on a particular project, or is it the audience? Or are you searching for the truth of the character? Are you aware of the camera?

SS: Of course, I am aware of the camera. Even though the director usually doesn't want that. But for me, the camera is another actor. I know where it is; I feel it. And I act with the camera. But at the same time, you have to be as good as an amateur. You can't show your technique when you're working. It's a contradiction, but you learn to hide it.

[So] yes, I am aware of the camera. Not of the audience, when filming. I think about them beforehand, when I'm planning the role and trying to figure out what kind of film the director wants to make, what they need, what I can do to help them. And what I can do to not ruin their film, because I could overdo it or make a mistake or something. So I create a framework within which I feel free.

FICM: When choosing a project, do you need to agree with the director's or screenwriter's perspective on what they are going to tell? Or do you prefer to explore a particular character?

SS: I do have to agree with the director because he has to—when we talk about independent and art films—be the center. That's how it should be. The film should be his. Totally. But how I act is my business. And, of course, if he disagrees, he'll protest. But that doesn't usually happen. That goes hand in hand with making a film that belongs to the director, not the actor. When I work with a first-time director, for example, I know more about filmmaking than he does, of course, but I can't impose my knowledge on him. I can put it in a pile of ideas and the director can choose whatever he wants. But he could revolutionize cinema by doing things in a new way. I don't know that. So I let him do his thing. I have to support him in that.

FICM: In the film, Gustav wants to work with his friends. Do you think that's a better working environment, collaborating with people you know, and participating not so much because of the importance of the work, but because of the people you want to work with?

SS: In a way, it's very important. Yes, I'm lucky. I've worked with many friends. And many people have become my friends. Besides, there's no reason to fight over art when you're doing it, because then you feel miserable and you can't do anything right. I love working with them, and you know, actors—people in film, in general—create a functional social unit in days or even hours. And it's very intimate. It's truly intimate. And then, poof, it's gone; they let it all go after a few months. But it's a genuine intimacy. And I thrive on that. I love it. And the other actors... they're the ones who make my performance, in a way, because I react to what they do.

FICM: Do you believe that acting has more to do with reacting than creating?

SS: Yes. And don't believe it. I mean, if you're building a character, it's like painting someone like you. You make up a story for them, you tell them how to walk, how to talk, how to live in every detail. But then you're controlling too much and you can't bring that idea to life. And you have to surprise yourself and let your subconscious work to surprise you and the other actors, because that's life. And life is the hardest thing to replicate.

FICM: I wanted to ask you about this because I noticed, for example, that Gustav hugs different people in different ways. Are these gestures something you plan, or do they just flow in the moment?

SS: Yes, I think about them in terms of whether there is an expression there. You say he hugs people differently, and there is an expression that means something, right? But it also depends on the mood I'm in when playing Gustav, and in relation to a particular character, the hug changes. It doesn't have to be so calculated.

FICM: Do you feel distant from the characters you play, or is there a lot of yourself in them?

SS: I am my own clay, my own color palette, you know? I have the colors I have, and I can only use those. But that doesn't mean I play myself. I mean, suddenly I can play a character who has more blue in my color palette, or then one who has more green. So I reduce the blue, and the green flourishes. But I am the vessel.

FICM: Sentimental Value is a film about the complexity of living an artistic life and balancing it with family life, and about what happens when the two collide. Do you think cinema provokes that in many people? Is it difficult to be a family man working in cinema?

SS: Every artist is obsessed in one way or another. It's silly, but you know that your work means more to you than a nine-to-five job. And inevitably, it's going to be difficult. There are always conflicts with family life, and I don't think they can be resolved, because you can't create a situation where they don't exist. And that goes for any conflict! But you can live with them and you can accept them or tell your kids, “I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.” If you censored your art to the point where you got no satisfaction from it, you'd become someone else, and you could only hope that your wife didn't want to be married to someone else.

FICM: Some people think that cinema and art are more important than ordinary life. Do you believe that?

SS: No. Not at all. But it's necessary. And you think, “Well, I'm making certain films about certain topics and I'm going to change the world with them,” and then it doesn't happen. But I think you can when you do something like this film. It doesn't have a message as such, but it's full of humanism. And it's a gentle film and it could make people a little gentler. They might wait five minutes before slaughtering another human being.